Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION
1.1 Context of Study
Capitalist class is the root cause of female oppression, exploitation and discrimination. They are socialized into exploitative relationships; socialization is carried out into home and all male-female relationships. (Young,1982. p.1) Class and gender politics has been prevalent in human history since its dawn. Relations between men and women are gender relations as well as social relations. Feminism and Marxism are inherently intertwined as class structure is a gender hierarchy. Forces of production have a sexual division of labor, out of home as well as within the home. Means of production are owned by men, social institutions privilege men and ideology of gender is also stereotypical. Certain mythical ideologies about females are perpetuated and regurgitated. Inequality of sexes was the first antagonism in human history which was strengthened by class inequality. This intertwined class and gender politics is depicted in the Slum Child and The White Tiger by Bina Shah and Aravind Adiga respectively. Aravind Adiga, an Indian author and Bina Shah, a Pakistani novelist are the young writers who have dared to peep down into the decayed basis of societal structures and expose them. Their novels seek to explore the economic, social, familial, political, sexual, psychological and cultural brought up of a man and woman in sub continent which resultantly raises a man on the social ladder or lowers a woman on the same social ladder. The research studies the chosen narratives with Marxist feminist lens. An attempt is made to integrate and synthesize Marxism and feminism. Feminism delves on the problems like family, discrimination in education through socialization, religion and prostitution. These issues are seen with a Marxist perspective which establishes that all these things have material basis. Hybridity of Marxism and Feminism explores and exposes the economic basis of familial system, religious institutions, educational system, prostitution and sexual and domestic violence. Neither Marxism is monolithic, nor is

feminism. All thoughts and ideas are colossal and conscious as they all are a result of socialization. Male female relationship becomes even more important owing to rapid industrialization, increased awareness of rights in women, individualism and westernization of attitudes. Gender ideology is incorporated into the dominant societal ideology. It is presented as the natural pattern of behavior and role attribution, in order to blind people to the hideous truths and brutal realities of social constructions. Gender is traced as a cultural construction cross culturally. Differences in male and female roles have been and still are a persistent part of human societies despite social, economic and political transformations. Female is internalized as docile, soft, passive, nurturant, vulnerable, weak, narcissistic, domestic, made for child care, home care and husband care. (MacKinnon,1999, p. 530) The varying societal roles can be explicated by sexual differences but gender differences are determined and constructed socially where men are higher on the social ladder and the women are lower. Sexual difference is used as an excuse for the maintenance of capitalist patriarchal system as it is propounded that the sexual, political and natural differences between men and women must be maintained as they reflect the natural and inevitable order of things. Sexual inequality is not an inevitable fact because womens subordination is so old, persistent, transcendental and unchallenged that it appears as natural though it is artificial and a conscious construction. It is propagated that class, race, sex and social artifacts of division spring directly from a biological reality as men and women are born differently. Men are unduly privileged. Even concept of marriage and family is basically based on unequal distribution of power and money. Capitalism makes use of the sexual subservience of women and manipulates it through over determinations of sexual politics to support the class politics through gender discrimination. The socialization process, the management of dissatisfaction, the allocation of roles between males and females and their career prospects are all in favor of capitalism and patriarchy. It also discusses male capacity for violence against women. (Holborn, 2012, p.7)

Sexuality is to feminism what work is to Marxism. Marxism has tried to understand the society in class terms but sex is another persistent challenge to the exclusive primacy of class as a social explanation because gender marginalization and class marginalization exist simultaneously. Female is considered devilish, soft, and meek as she is even accused of persuading male to commit the first sin of the world and to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree of heaven. Pain, thingification, commodification, and isolation of women are deeply entrenched into society. Women are pacified and pampered into non- personhood because they have never been put on a pedestal that is why they are unaware of any other way of existence. Womens body has been given an ideational place where her body is taken as provocative. Career women are blamed of using their sexual appeal to move forward in their careers, domestic beating is taken as a form of intense love. All these ideas primarily bear out of the identification of women as a sex and not as human beings. As a social construction, women are presented as coward, weak, vulnerable, narcissist, timid, docile, child like, impotent and masochistic. Patriarchy continually exerts pressures and undermines females of their self confidence and assertiveness through social practices by which female learns to take timidity and shyness as the natural constituents of her personality. This is explicitly manifested through body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions. Women are defined in relation to man. All things approved in men are those which are disapproved in women. Men who cry are pejoratively called, sissies. Female models like Cinderella and sleeping beauty serve as ideological state apparatus which teaches the women to wait for their Prince Charming, declaring marriage and the man as the ultimate ends of a womans life. A good man is the highest reward of a good girl. There is a prevailing sense of ideas of flesh and blood in the chosen narratives. They challenge, redress and renew each other continually and bring the deepest secrets of societal constructions in front of the readers. This research is going to be a comparative study of these novels which places these novels in front of each other and sees that how the novels make, remake, build and demolish each other, consequently highlighting the capitalist grounds of all female oppression in sub continental societies.

The class and gender divides as depicted in the novels through protagonists Balram and Laila are not the choices made by immoral or weak people; rather these are circumstantially imposed conditions of society which arise from the class and gender stratification. Sexual and gender politics in a globalized economy are despotically presented by the authors. The aspired research depicts that how these social stratifications intersect to produce the alienation and exaggerate the existing gender discrimination to support and encourage patriarchy, men and capitalism, simultaneously positioning the women on a lower place and confining them to certain boundaries of home, market, and professional life.

1.2

Research Questions
Research questions postulated for the study are given below 1. How the relationships of Capitalism and Patriarchy are manifested in the White Tiger and Slum Child? 2. Which societal, cultural and gender biases contribute to Lailas circular and Balrams upward movement on the societal ladder? 3. How does Ideological State Apparatus support and strengthen the class and gender divisions as manifested in The White Tiger and Slum Child?

1.3

Objectives of the Research

The study seeks to scrutinize the intertwined and mutually supportive patriarchal and

capitalist societal constructions. It further explores Laila and Balrams characters to study various elements contributing to their different fates though they belonged to the same social stratum with the same material conditions.

1.4

Significance and Scope of Study

The White Tiger and Slum Child were published in 2008 and 2010 respectively so

there is hardly any research done on these novels which leaves a spacious room for more research and adds to the value of this thesis. Moreover, no comparative study of these novels with a hybrid, Marxist Feminist theory has been made yet. So a comparative study of The White Tiger and Slum Child is highly significant and a very useful addition to the existing store of knowledge. Study also helps to expose the grounds for womens exploitation and oppression in capitalist patriarchal societies. It explains that how class, money and men work together to confine women to certain limits, leaving no voice and no room for them in the cultural 4

construction of society. It stresses the need of the struggle of women for a structural and societal transformation.

1.5

Delimitation of the Study

The White Tiger and Slum Child contain numerous varying issues like globalization,

rooster coop, technological usurpation, rehabilitation centers and drug abuse etc. Slum Child has even been mildly criticized by reviewers for trying to tackle too many issues in one novel with few characters. Exploration and exposition of all the issues highlighted in the novels in one single research work would have been quite difficult that is why research explores only the focused issues of sexuality, class and gender politics, and working of various ideological apparatuses for the maintenance of class and gender divisions in which patriarchy and capitalism are intertwined to support and strengthen each other.

1.6

Introduction to Key Terms

A brief introduction to the terms chosen from the theory and used for the analysis of

the The White Tiger and Slum Child is given below:

1.6.1 Marxist Feminism

It is the synthesis of Marxism and Feminism which suggests that class and gender stratification is reciprocal. It is intertwined and mutually supportive. Men and women are the members of the working class who is exploited at the hands of bourgeoisie. Women, as members of the working class, are doubly suppressed, devalued and dehumanized. Marxist Feminism strives to explore the material grounds of female oppression in capitalist societies and challenge the womens relegation to the role of a mere servant in societal constructions through socialization and ideology.

1.6.2 Ideology
Notion of Ideology was first propounded by Karl Marx in his book German Ideology where he presented ideology as false consciousness. It can also be called the superstructure of society. Ruling material force of society is also the ruling intellectual force. It is a social reproduction that is intentionally perpetuated and regurgitated in order to maintain the status quo and strengthen the capitalism. It presents the ideology of the bourgeoisie as the common and dominant ideology so the proletariat or working class accept

and adopt the bourgeoisie ideology as the natural way of thinking and living. It is used as a tool to relegate working class to the status of sub ordinates.

1.6.3 Family ISA

Family serves as an ideological State Apparatus. Child is trained and taught certain set of rules about life, about society and about ways of living when he is born. Family socializes a child into the acceptance of the status quo and obedience to the existing relations of production in the societal set up. So family provides the capitalist system with the obedient labor force through the processes of reproduction and socialization. Moreover, wives serve as the domestic servants who serve without any monetary wages. They absorb the frustrations of the husbands which otherwise might be turned towards the capitalism. It also persuades men to spend luxuriously on the things produced by the capitalists. This consumption strengthens the capitalist relations of production.

1.6.4 Educational ISA

Educational ISA refers to schools, colleges and universities which teach the young kids to behave in certain ways. It teaches them to accept authority without questions. It persuades them to get into competition and also infuses in them a spirit of obedience for the system which will later on help them get absorbed in the capitalist system and support it instead of being a challenge and a threat to the exploitative relations of production in society. Curriculum in educational institutions is designed by those who possess power and money. It is a very effective and useful tool of ideological state apparatus.

1.7

Design of Research
The research starts with Introduction that comprises of an explication of the hybrid

theory, Marxist Feminism, postulating the questions, answers to which thesis seeks to trace out. It also justifies the importance and contribution of this research work in the existing store of knowledge and research simultaneously setting grounds for next chapters. Second chapter Literature Review reviews and analyzes all the literature relevant to The White Tiger and Slum Child and the theory which is employed for the analysis of the aforementioned novels. Third Chapter Research Methodology is divided into two parts. First part Materials and Methods discusses those materials and methodologies which help in the collection, analysis, and establishment of the findings of the research. Its second part Theoretical Framework highlights the theory, Marxist Feminism and Ideological State Apparatuses. In 6

fourth chapter, novels under discussion, The White Tiger and Slum Child are analyzed to see how Marxism and feminism are intertwined, keeping in view the protagonists of both of the novels. It explores Balarm and Lailas characters to expose the various factors contributing to their social existence. It also explores the use of Ideological State Apparatuses especially family, religion and education. Further it studies Laila and Balrams characters to study their development in the plots of the narratives. Conclusion illustrates the findings of the research work that how this study answers the queries postulated at the genesis of this research. A list of all the works cited, mentioned or used for this research is included in the bibliography at the end of the thesis.

Chapter 2

LITERATURE REVIEW
A Marxism and feminism are not monolithic discourses rather their boundaries tend to intercept and intermingle with each other. An assemblage of Marxism and feminist theory has resulted in the hybrid theory that is named Marxist Feminism. Theorists have delved deep into the realm of theory to explore the implicit aspects and expose the hidden connotations of the synthesis of these theories. A review of the literature pertaining to the hybrid Marxist feminist theory is crucial for this research because theory also serves as a pillar for it.

2.1

Marxist Feminism
Richard Clarke (2005) opines in Marxist Feminism that gender is a construction of

society. He discusses base and super structure model of Marxist theory in relation to feminism which propagates that the ideas of feminism are basically propounded by the economic base. Economy is the determinant of the oppression and exploitation of gender differences as gender is a function of ones anatomical sex. Marxist feminist rests their opinion upon economy as the base structure, and methods of thoughts are superstructures which are determined by base. Thus feminist ideology and gender stratification as well as role assignment is a construction of economic factors. Patriarchal societal set up is primarily rooted into economics. Clarke refers to the historical evidence saying that men have always controlled the means of production whereas women have always been on the serving end, controlling nothing but their labor. Class structure is primary and gender difference secondary. Men and women being historically differentiated by their relationship to the means of production class structure is also a gender inflected hierarchy, inequality between sexes being ultimately reducible to economic inequality. This results in a sexual division of labor in which women either are not allowed to work or they are confined to certain menial, poorly remunerated tasks in public sphere. (Clark, 2005, p.1) Differences in feminine and masculine roles are largely due to the differences in the distribution of wealth between them. Possession of a feminist stand point also depends on the

position of a female within the social hierarchy. The social position that is ascribed to s/he tends to make a man or a woman a feminist or non-feminist. Clarke also points out the essential classification, that is social, moral and literary construction of females into two categories: Sinner or a virgin. Female as a chaste virgin, an obedient domestic servant, a devoted mother, selfless wife, amid all economic, social and domestic pressure, is appreciated in society. This division ultimately helps patriarchs to limit their wealth to their immediate family members, without any interference from any other man. Workers International League (2002) gauges feminism as a form of oppression, discrimination and injustice which is used by the capitalists to segregate women from the rest of working class to weaken the proletariat cause. It supports a unity of bourgeoisie irrespective of the race, class, sex or gender to fight capitalism and get rid of the oppression practiced through the perpetuation of conformist ideologies. Positive discrimination is used to limit the working women into a different sphere than that of the feminists. Capitalists manage to weaken the proletariat cause by the provision of privileged positions and nice jobs to few well educated and strong females. Thus these women join the ranks of exploiters by changing their motto of female emancipation with the notion of one by one, commencing with myself, giving an impression that if few women are given the privilege and their rights, it means that something is being done. These privileged women stand against the feminist agendas, ultimately weakening it. Oppression does not arise out of the naturally inherent male ideologies rather it is transported and perpetuated to the members of society. It is social construction. Females must fight for their rights, against unequal wages, domestic and sexual violence, burden of house work and bearing and rearing of children alone. Patricia Connelly (1983) highlights the position of women as a reserve army of labor in economy that can be engaged into production when needed and pushed out of it when they are no more needed into the production process. The existence of this reserve army of labor is necessary for the capitalist mode of production though it is not necessary for this reserve force to consist solely of women. Demise of capitalism has important implications for feminist movement but it cannot be guaranteed that the female oppression will come to an end with the over throw of 9

capitalism. Gender discrimination preceded capitalism and served as an agent to strengthen it. Connelly posits that females belonging to different social classes face a different oppression and they are vulnerable to different pressures, that is why their agendas within feminist movement also differ from each other. Class struggle and women struggle do not always coincide and the working class and middle class do not always share the same forms of oppression. (Connelly, 1983 , p.159) She further questions the responsibility of woman for child bearing and child rearing. Female has the biological responsibility of bearing children but rearing the children is a responsibility which is socially given to female as a compliment to her femininity. This construction of femininity and masculinity is done to support patriarchy. The ideology of gender is perpetuated and propagated on purpose. It is very deeply incorporated into the dominant ideology. Alan Woods (2001) suggests that the overthrow of capitalism at the hands of proletariat is a valid option to abolish capitalism as well as to emancipate women from the clutches of patriarchal system. Class oppression and gender oppression, both were started at the same time in history and both of them serve each other. Marxists consider the class division and feminist consider the gender division the root cause of all forms of oppression in human societies. But in the fight against these oppressions, working class must lead the war irrespective of any differences of class, race, color, nationality and language as the whole working class is united in their cause to get rid of bourgeoisie. It is obligatory for working class to take the stand for the whole proletariat as Marxism is internationalism. (Woods, 2001, p.2) Bourgeoisie patriarchal family did not exist from the beginning of the history rather it was created because of the male necessity to keep women at home in domestic sphere as a servant so that she could not participate in the market. Marx and Engels suggested the abolition of bourgeoisie family. But it is not the solution to the problem unless we eradicate the root cause of the problem that is unjust distribution of wealth among different classes and genders in society. For this cause, women must participate in class struggle and develop a class consciousness and confidence in them.

10

The real emancipation is possible only when the working class as a whole emancipates itself. Socialism will permit the free development of human personality and the establishment of genuinely human relationship among men and women. (Woods, 2001, p. 11) Woods looks at the whole material pursuit as a blind in which men and women are unable to see the reality of their existence and the true nature of their relationship. With the abolition of class society and capitalist interest, human beings will be able to form genuinely true relations with each other. The new and free men and women will no more be slave to egotistical calculations, bigotry, dependence and lust for power, thus they will cherish harmonious relations without the humiliating material pursuit and slave mentality. Angela Miles (1983) argues in her article Economism and Feminism: Hidden in the household that authors of the books about feminism hardly ever talk about feminism and capitalism. They are unable to present an analysis of class and gender. She explores the structural changes for domestic labor instead of tracing the historical reasons of gender oppression. She discusses gender oppression and domestic violence, considering that sexual oppression and class oppression intersect each other. Capitalist relations are built in such a way as to support patriarchy. Illusion of the sanctity of privacy leaves an open room for men to practice violence in domestic privacy which gives rise to unsupervised male dominance within the family. Females dependency and isolation separates her from a male. If women are given less leisure, it ultimately results in more leisure from men. She performs all the domestic chores, serves his man and his family and gets no monetary pay for the services. She must be paid for the services that she performs without any material incentive. Difference in the value of the male and female labor compels female to stay at home to go through the drudgery of everyday domestic routine. If she joins the paid working force, it will definitely increase the family income but at the same time it will result in the decrease of the male power at home. Man is more powerful at house because he is the one who holds the purse strings and provides the bread and butter to the family. This petty male dominance within a proletariat family is a result of capitalist economy.

11

Men appropriate the unpaid labor of women through the institution of marriage, the material oppression of women lies in patriarchal relations of production within the family. (Connelly, 1983, p.158) Key concern of Marxist feminist must be to explore the interrelation of patriarchy and capitalism to trace out the origin of women subordination. Pat Armstrong and Hugh Armstrong (1983) in their article Beyond Sexless Class and Classless Sex: Towards Feminist Marxism assert that men and women have utterly different experience under capitalism. Sexual division of labor is essential to capitalist mode of production at the highest level of abstraction. If female subordination did not exist before capitalism, capitalism would have created it. Capitalism is premised on free wage labor so it necessitates the existence of some kind of segregation and division. It finds this segregation in the female by confining her to the domestic sphere where she bears kids, rears them and performs all the chores. Existence of sexual division of labor leaves bigger room for men to take on a privileged position by being the earning member of the family who provides the basic necessities of life to the family members. They consider the capitalist mode of production on all levels of its production suggesting that the possession of means of production establishes certain relations of production among various social classes. After a certain time period in history, relations of production and forces of production come into conflict with each other, resulting in the over throw of system and replacing old relations with new relations of production. There are various divisions in society which are based on the relations of production (classes) and those which are based on relations other than production (gender). It is capitalist mode of production which determines the ideological, political and social forms within a society. They studied that how the relations of production and gender structures intersect, combine and conflict in societal formations. Michelle Barret (1980) opines that gender division is a historically constructed part of capitalism. Gender discrimination precedes class discrimination but with the passage of time, capitalism made use of the existing gender divisions to derive its strength from it, gradually making it a necessary condition of society. Capitalism requires women to be relegated to the domestic sphere out of the wage market. Armstrong argues that it was done through a long process of struggle between women and better organized males that they succeeded in 12

confining her to the four walls of the house. This serves to the disadvantage of women and their organization and privileged men and their power. Martha E.Gimenez (2000) explores the issue of language in conscious and identity construction along with examining the mutually intertwined and supportive nature of male and capitalists dominance in the human history. She declares the issues of class and gender accompanied by race to be very important in todays theory and politics as well as knowledge. Gender oppression is firmly grounded in the class oppression. Roles which are ascribed to female are tools to maintain the gender discrimination to strengthen bourgeoisie. That is why, a materialist understanding of female oppression is necessary to liberate women from wrong conventions. Gender is not the effect of one single cause, patriarchy; rather this has a causal link with multiple reasons. It has class, material interest, ruling bourgeoisie as its determinants. There is a whole web of psychological and social relations and methods which generate the oppression and social production and role of gender. Feminism must serve as an emancipatory narrative for the emancipation of female and working class from these well planned relations of production. Gimenez acknowledges the role of language in consciousness raising. Consciousness is a social production and language is the primary tool of social communication and expression of ideas through which consciousness is built. The problem of the material relationship between language, discourse and the social or between the discursive (feminist theory) and nondiscursive(womens lives divided by exploitative and oppressive social relations) can be resolved through the conceptualization of discourse as ideology. (Gimenez, 2000, p.10) It has played a very vital role in institutionalization and commodification of gender and identity building in females and working class. It can be used as a tool of emancipation as it has been used as a tool of mental imprisonment. Language is the practical consciousness, a way of thinking and acting in the world that has its material consequences. (Gimenez, 2000, p. 6) She suggests that we can resolve these conflicts and contradictions only by bringing a qualitative change in our social system which will help to dispel the colonial, gender, class 13

and race issues and the effects attached to these. It will remove those materialist realities that attach female oppression to the class division. Life is expressed through production and the means of production as human beings need cloths, shelter, food, money as the basic necessities of life. For fulfilling these needs, man is involved in the pursuit of economic production which ultimately builds his consciousness and determines his being. These relations of production cannot be analyzed without considering human conditions. Failure of Marxism can be seen in the various practices in gender and sexual division like patriarchy, family, and the state, domestic labor, sexual division of labor and womens place in labor force. All of these institutions are established and supported by capitalists. They have an inter supportive relationship. She propounds that all theoretical perspectives have their political implications as they propagate certain agendas and support certain groups. Feminist perspective supports feminist agendas, Marxist perspective support the proletariat agenda. Oppression of women must be seen in class context in order to understand this process as a whole that how production, reproduction and ideologies are produces by the social and material conditions and how they in turn reform those social and material conditions. Everything is socially or discursively constructed, or a localized, contingent story. (Gimenez, 2000, p.18) She has argued well that the superstructure of society and socially constructed ideologies are not automatically established rather they have a long well articulated and well thought history behind them. They propagate certain ideologies to support some classes or gender groups to maintain the existing state of affairs in the society which strengthens the bourgeoisie. Catherine A. MacKinnon (1982) declares work the basic activity that determines the material being of human beings; it is the activity that bestows people with an identity. It is structured by class; production is its resultant. Control is the main issue in work that how to confine people and classes to their respective works. Its congealed form is capital. Sexuality determines the social being of people as work determines the material being of man. It directs, presses, organizes or actualizes the desire that is the determinant of gender divisions which are known as men and women. It is structured out of heterosexuality; its congealed forms are family and gender. Its consequence is reproduction; control is its issue. 14

She rightly calls feminism and Marxism the theories of power, its distribution and inequality, narrating the unjustified rationally inherited social relations and arrangements. Work and sexuality are the powers in Marxism and feminism respectively. She explores the relation between the emergence of class and gender stratification that how the few have always ruled the many and why those few always have been the men. Consciousness Raising is the basic tool in feminism as well as in Marxism. Phenomenon of power and powerlessness is explored through the social construction that proves that power and powerlessness are externally imposed and internalized in the people. Femininity becomes the identity for women whereas it becomes desirability for men. Identity of female is established through the male, the powerful, who is stronger than her in material terms. Women have been historically thingified, commodified and othered which has led to their non personhood and isolation in society, rendering them a passive existence. Class is different for women than what it is for men. Women derive their class position from their relation to the male, status of the male and his privileges. Feminist institutions and the central issues of gender like family, sexuality, domesticity, household, reproduction and socialization are deeply incorporated into Marxism. In Marxist sphere, female becomes a caste, an othered self, a stratum, cultural group, representative of the family and a passive working group. Ideology is the thought that is socially determined. It is unconscious of its social determinations. It serves as a tool for sexists and capitalists. It is a tool of emancipation as well as of subordination for the women in particular, working class in general and over all for all the oppressed groups in the society. It makes the social relations and material conditions look natural when actually they are not. It internalizes the gender and class division in a societal hierarchy. Class and gender politics and stratification has been an important feature of the capitalist societies. Sex and material conditions has been determinants of ones social conditions, serving as a ground for exploitation and oppression. Feminism and Marxism are the discourses which expose the internalization and imposition of these exploitations which are so deeply rooted into the social structures that they appear natural.

2.2

Reviews of the Novels

Class stratification and gender discrimination have a reciprocal relationship in which

capitalism and patriarchy support and strengthen each other. These reciprocal relationships 15

are manifested by Bina Shah and Aravind Adiga in their novels The White Tiger and Slum Child. These novels were written and published in 2008 and 2010 respectively. Aravind Adigas The White Tiger and Bina Shahs Slum Child possess the vitality of youth with which they penetrate deep into the ills of society to explore the underlying class, societal and gender divides. Their novels, in which we probe into the world with young, uncorrupt and sympathetic eyes, have sparked anxious applause for the exposition of the injustices at the roots of society and outright condemnation for putting those pictures on the page which are ignored by the privileged societal strata. It comprises the troubles like family, education, religion, prostitution and gender discrimination.

2.2.1 Slum Child by Bina Shah

Slum Child by Bina Shah is riddled with the pangs of Laila who is enchained by her ascribed gender role. Her suffering is heightened by the class stratification in a patriarchal society. Slum Child is a circular story. By the end f the narrative, Laila reaches at the same position where she started. This circular journey leaves her satisfied. Ideological state apparatuses like education, family, society and police are interwoven with the gender issues like reproduction, domestic violence, sexual harassment and patriarchal oppression in the novel. Laila, a nine years old girl, and her sister Jumana, belong to a very poor Christian family living in a slum, called Issa Colony, in Karachi. Their mother got divorced because of not bearing any boys. She remarries a good-for-nothing drug addict. She works in the rich houses to earn bread and butter for her kids and husband. Jumana dies of tuberculosis as she couldnt get proper medical treatment owing to the lack of financial resources. Her mother is left mentally derailed after Jumanas death, unable to work and earn anymore, leaving the whole family without any income. Lailas stepfather plans to throw her into the dirty dungeon of prostitution but she escapes and seeks shelter in a rich house as a servant. Her step father traces her escapade and convinces her to return for her sick mother. When she arrives there, she finds the house empty but her dying mother is lying on the bare floor. Laila takes her mother to a rehabilitation centre and her life gets on the same smooth track again. It may be called a travel forward starting from bad to worse and then travel backward from worse to bad again, moving in a circle where Laila returns at the same point where she starts.

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Sukalp Sharma (2012) sheds light on the mature analysis of life by an immature protagonist who experiences such abnormal things as might be deemed illogical for a normal girl. Issues like unbridgeable and widening socio economic gaps, religious frustrations and fundamentalism, gender discrimination, description of destitution and sexual and psychological harassment also grasp Sharmas attention. He highlights escapist tendencies of characters in the Slum Child in Hues and Lows of Pakistan. The world in Slum Child is seen through the eyes of a little nine years old girl, Laila, living in Issa colony that is described as a detached scorn (Sharma, 2010, p 1) who suffers the most unlikely things in her life. Mothers divorce for bearing girls, her remarriage, sisters agonizingly helpless death at the hands of tuberculosis, mothers mental unbalance, sexual assaults, step fathers plan to sell her, her escape, return, life as a servant and eventual satisfaction with life even with the presence of impassable societal, economic, religious, familial and gender divides; This all is too much for a single novel. Laila suffers because she is a female and hails from the economically and socially lowest class. Moreover she belongs to a religious minority as she is a Christian in a society with Muslim majority. Shah provides us with a chance to peep into the tribulations and ills brought over because of the socio economic stratification of a patriarchal society. Sharma also notices that Shah usage of first person narrative which renders a sense of detachment to the book. He is appreciative of Slum Child for its vivid detailing of the description of manifestations of destitution and dogmas (Sharma, 2010, p 2). Sharma points out the conflict of agendas in Slum Child as he finds out that Bina Shah describes the luxurious and lavish life of the rich more aptly and skillfully than that of destitute and unprivileged. Though she is representing the poor but her lack of actual experience makes her aspired Marxist and feminist agendas collide with capitalist patriarchal agendas. Characters are pretty predictable as an attempt to keep the story realistic. Slum Child has a predictable, moving conclusion which compensates for the too many themes of the story. Jaimon Joseph (2012) hails Slum Child as vivid, immediate and unbelievable for successfully portraying Laila, as a pre teen, struggling to balance her own ideas, what she is taught and what she observes in her family. Slum Child observes and describes the human feelings and struggle. Laila is a nine years old girl, gradually her 17

character is transformed from an innocent girl to an adult who discovers the most horrific and brutal realities of life in lovely, honest and refreshing story entitled Slum Child (Joseph, 2012, p. 1). It peeps into female psychology as it depicts not only the contentment of a child with life but also the resentment of a female with the havoc that life plays upon her. Novel also sheds an informative light on the hypocrisy and difference between the real and the ideal, showing what Laila is taught at school and what she actually observes happening in the society. It helps to know the mental and psychological traumas that a female has to go through in a patriarchal and capitalist society. Vivek Tanjuja (2012) speaks about the happy-go-lucky-existence of Laila where at the start she has no worries of the life unlike her sister who has to do the domestic chores as well as strive for her dreary existence. He also explores the escapist tendencies of the characters in the novel, as he observes that all the characters are trying to escape something, and during these evasive efforts they prey upon other characters too. He observes mother wants to escape her dreary existence, her step-father his debts and her sister this life. (Tenjuja, 2012, p.1). It is an emotional journey into Lailas life, penetrating into her feelings and emotions which change with the alteration in time and circumstances. Slum Child is a distinct female choice from Pakistan where the main literary scene has always been dominated by male authors, writes Huma Imtiaz (2011) in A View of the Slums. She too pities Laila for experiencing too many troubles like a dying sister, heroin addicts, a step father, sexual harassment, religious divides and the divides between the rich and the poor (Imtiaz, 2011, p. 1). She has adorably beautified the narrative by using interesting metaphors which at times turn into the oddest and repulsive description (Imtiaz, 2011, p. 1). She is also critical of health system in third world countries as Jumana dies because of unavailability of medical treatment for tuberculosis owing to financial deprivation. The poor cannot even manage their existence on earth whereas the rich can get the European doctors even for their minor diseases. In all the evil characters pursuing each other, Haroon Makrani is the only redeeming factor as he rehabilitates his life from being a heroin addict to a good citizen. (Imtiaz, 2011, p. 2) She finds the novel far too ambitious in its social commentary; it also discusses blasphemy law. Laila being a Christian in a Muslim country is more vulnerable to these laws.

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Imtiaz is appreciative of the narrative for being comprehensive. Novel gives a happy ending to too many wildly scattered topics throughout the narrative. Joseph Vinod (2012) explores Slum Child as a realistic and dramatic presentation of Lailas story who suffers from gender, class, religious, and parental oppression. He also investigates the ideological and psychological connotations in the novel which are portrayed in a simple and comprehensible language. He also raises questions about few loose threads which mar the beauty of Slum Child, such as the abrupt conclusion of the novel, Lailas unnecessary secretive attitude about her mothers mental disintegration and Bina Shahs attempt to tackle too many topics with few characters. Besides speaking of the vast and unbridgeable gap between haves and have nots which separates those living in mansions and those quarrelsome good-for-nothings residing the slums, Slum Child tears apart the faade of apparently smooth religious atmosphere in country. It depicts the vulnerability of a Christian girl Laila. Lailas school teacher speaks of Christianity being inferior to Islam, putting her in a state of doubt about religious causes of peace and fraternity. Religious fundamentalism and extremism finds its demonstration in the rich girl who stealthily goes to attend religious gatherings where all black burqa clad women gather to speak about female independence and education. They tell women to serve their husbands and staying in the four walls of the house. Pakistani patriarchal societys preference for sons is highlighted through few incidents very realistically. Lailas mother is divorced for her inability to give birth to sons. She compensates this after remarrying a drunkard and bearing three sons or him. Later on Lailas step father tries to sell Laila for prostitution in order to give a better life style to his sons. Rida Sakina (2011) penetrates Slum Child as a commentary on the issues like poverty, gender biases and stereotypes. These issues are too apparent to be ignored in Pakistan. Sakina opines that Bina Shah has shoved these things into our face. Dark societal dilemmas like disabled children, beggars, suffering of minorities, and the presence of a male gaze in the novel also begs attention. Binas metaphorical descriptions like stripes of a mal nourished tiger adorn as well as make the things repulsive to expose all their hideousness. These descriptions also help reader in building a picture in mind to understand the callous facts of life portrayed in the novel. 19

Sakina advocates Laila, supporting Bina for using a childs voice for narrating the experiences of abject poverty, filthy wealth, agonizing illness, fanatic religion, sexual hunger and lusty gaze to make her description more real, neutral and appealing as children are innocent and see the world with honest eyes. She also speaks in Binas favor by sa ying that she has tried to sympathize with the poor though she has no connection with them, by touching upon key issues blackening the society. (Sakina, 2011, p. 1) Fatima Emaani (2012) interrogates the thematic construction of Slum Child. She calls it a quintessential drama in which few things, as Jumanas death, were given unnecessary and detailed description and few others, like Haroon Makraani, did not get the due attention as a redeeming factor which ultimately leads to dreary boredom for the reader. She traces out the apt though unnecessarily glorified description of the death, dreary life, decay, disease, betrayal and drug addiction in Slum Child. Fatima finds that the novel is at its best in its juxtaposition of affluence and poverty in Pakistani societys startling sensitivity. (Emaani, 2012, p. 1). She also explores the feminist agenda of the novel as it presents a female protagonist rising above all odds in a patriarchal social order. (Emaani, 2012, p. 1). Muhammad Saleem (2010) opines that Slum Child tries to take too many issues in one plot which renders it a boring complexity. Christianity and Islam share many similarities, comments Basu Anjana (2010) on Slum Child. Rising religious fundamentalism and intolerance is depicted in the novel. Novel portrays the brutal realities of life through abysmal poverty and overflowing drain of city slums, tearing apart the faade of equal chances of learning and earning for all. Novel becomes a way too inclusive in its attempt to talk on behalf of everyone. Slum Child is a female voice speaking for a female protagonist, which is a courageous effort in a male dominated Pakistani literary scene but it is not merely feminist. It seeks to give a voice to all the mute throats whose speaking power is snatched by a capitalist patriarchal system.

2.2.2 The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

The White Tiger interrogates the hideous societal division into have-nots and those who have a little too much. Balram ends up at the highest ladder as a member of well heeled class where he reaches partly because of his advantages of being a male in a patriarchal society. 20

The White Tiger is the story of a school going boy, Balram. His mother is dead and father lives his life like an animal but he wants his son to live like a man. Balram is compelled to leave his education to earn for his family. After trying his hand at many jobs, he finally becomes a driver to a rich man. Meanwhile he pursues his education, at least the worldly education, by all means. During his job, many facts dawn upon him, which turn a serene little villager into a cold blooded murderer who seeks revenge from the rich. He is not ready to let go of his dream of getting rich and living an honorable life. Eventually he even sacrifices his family to realize his dream and becomes a member of the well heeled class. This journey from rags to riches is completed through many hideous, illegal and immoral roads. Still Balrams bid for a respectful life deserves applause. Souma Bhattacharya (2008) comments on this novel in The Independent that Aravind Adiga has sharply and very wit fully presented and compared two Indias, Dark India and Lightened India. Adiga explores that how people from one side collude and collide with that of the other. He has done this quite comfortably, balancing the pace from the very beginning of the novel. But this pace quickens a bit at the end as the novel has an abrupt ending. Novel is written at a time when India is going through big revolutionary changes. There is huge money flowing in but rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer. This widening gap between both of these classes is leading to ethical gambling as Balram is witnessed murdering his master. This act cannot be justified on humanistic grounds as the killing of a human being is an unforgivable act. Balram feels himself justified in killing him as he thinks of it as revenge upon the whole capitalist class. It is a rebellion against the prevailing social system and the ruling class. S. Prasannarajan (2010) expresses his opinion in Driving Out of Darkness about the novel in India Today that this novel pretty finely shows the ruthlessness of the Indian capitalist political system which supports the privileged to prey upon the under privileged. Adiga has portrayed the feelings of the protagonist as an outcast who is always looked down upon. This brutal war between power and survival involves numerous moral, ethical and legislative ambiguities. Indian political system is unequal, callous and brutal, taking no considerations for the poor. Elite class leads a luxurious life with a European life style, coming to native lands only 21

to rule. They return after looting the money of the poor of their homeland and depositing it in their foreign bank accounts. Their children live and study abroad as in the novel the st orks son has recently returned from America, his American wife insists him to go back but his father compels him to stay because he can rule in India. These people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths and live their lives in utter comfort and luxury. This is the vicious cycle which never ends. Adam Lively (2010) in Sunday Times declares The White Tiger extraordinary and brilliant. He declares that Adiga is a real writer who has given expression to a real voice with a real vision. Deidre Donahue (2010) writes in USA Today that The White Tiger is one of the most powerful books in decades. It is an angry expression against the injustice and dirty power practices. It is striking; things are presented realistically in this novel without exaggeration. Sameer Rahim (2008) comments about this debut novel of Aravind Adiga in Times Literary Supplement that The White Tiger is just like the stories of the drivers magazine Murder Weekly, as it involves conspiring and revengeful servants, corrupt businessmen and their spoilt wives. It is a brilliantly useful and entertaining depiction of developing economy of India, providing a real portrait of India, showing the reality of all the optimistic stories about rapidly growing Indian economy. The White Tiger tells about Murder Weekly It is sold at every news stand in the city, whether they are cooks, Childrens maids or gardeners. Drivers are no different. Every week when this magazine comes out with the cover image of a woman cowering from her would be murderer, some driver has bought the magazine and has been passing it to the other drivers.you see the murderer in the magazine is so mentally disturbed and sexually deranged that not one reader would want to be like him, and in the end he always gets caught by some honest, hard working police officer(ha!), or goes mad and hangs himself by a bed sheet after writing a sentimental letter to his mother or primary school teacher, or is chased, beaten, buggered and garroted by the brother of the woman he has done in (Adiga, 2008, p. 115) 22

Balrams tranquility is frightening after killing his master. He does not give up his dream even after knowing that he would not see any of his family members alive anymore. Adrian Turpin (2008) expresses his wonder on the bid which Balram has paid for his freedom from poverty, from a brutal system, from throat clutching threats of his masters in Financial Times. It is by the virtue of sheer luck that he escapes the end of being caught by police or the Stork, which he has feared most and getting the hardest imaginable punishment for his crime. He is confused about the novel betwixt being a revolutionary standing against the system or serving to strengthen the status quo he fought against as he bribes the police and exploites another travel company to establish his own. This is an awe inspiring narrative of the courage and valor of a man who has his own standard of good and bad, of a deceitful murderer who finds it fit to counter the system using the same tools which system uses against him. These views are expressed by Kevin Rushby (2008) in The Guardian in His Monster's Voice. He declares Balrams voice quickwitted and self mocking as well as unbelievably fast to take advantage of the occasion. Moreover, he always knows which the right moment is for him. Yet he raises an objection that the novel could not be read as the voice of entire India. There are many Indias which are not given any voice yet. He keeps his fingers crossed for Aravind Adigas next book. This is an enjoyable journey through a rising global economy, says David Mattin (2008) in Independent on Sunday in A Chatty Murderer Exposes the Underbelly of India's Tiger Economy. The murder in the novel is quite predictable. Balram always broods about himself, India and his little world. He has done a crime and by no ways he can be considered innocent. David thinks Balram is not fairly punished for his crime. He is partly right because Balram is punished heavily as the price of the murder of one member of Storks family; he loses all his family members. That heavy a price might not have been afforded by anyone but the protagonist of the The White Tiger is declared a psycho path by some critics as he is utterly selfish and greedy. Sanjay Subrahmanyam (2010) sees this novel, in London Review of Books as an expression of deep rooted anger against all the injustices, inequalities, exploitations which are an ultimate consequence of the modern Globalized India. This Globalization has produced many millionaires there but the lower classes are still standing on the same grounds. This book lacks verisimilitude which seems to go un-noticed by most of the readers. 23

The novel becomes a part of the same system it abuses and tears down as Balram himself becomes an exploiter. Nakul Krishna (2008) in New Statesman finds out a resemblance betwixt Aravind Adiga and Munshi Prem chand as both of them have used their writing as a tool to expose the bitter servility and the social and political lives of the people. This is simply beyond doubt that this tool has been very effective. Lee Thomas (2008) opines in San Francisco Chronicle that Adigas profession as a journalist has left its marks on his novel. The stories in the novel seem like the breaking news. These stories are immediate but the way he gives the details of little happenings is the main captivating force in his novel. He has beautifully mingled the fable and observation to create a narrative which describes people fighting odds to survive in a startling way. The murder in the story is pre meditated as well as pre planned. The consequences of this murder turn out exactly the way they have been assumed. It tears apart the myth of Globalization and miracles which Indian economy is doing for its masses. These views are shared by Scott Menditz (2008). Akash Kapoor (2008) also shares these views in The New York Times Book Review saying that Indian Nation is very proud on Indias rapid progress that India is making by leaps and bounds but The White Tiger reveals the real story. It explores a hidden India. The exploitation of the poor on the hands of the rich has been tolerated for a long time but now this compact of tolerance is at its breaking end. This novel predicts the revolution which would take place because of the inequalities which are penetrating India despite of its newly gained and largely propagated prosperity. The murder in the novel is an act of class warfare. This would be the ultimate result of class antagonism that the rich would be abolished by the poor. Kate Saunders (2008) in The Times praises the way Adiga presents the realities of modern India, without giving us any fake romantic picture of Indias prosperity he explores the truth about it. He has not made any poetic view of Indias past or future but he has hoped for the best. Neel Mukherji (2008) in The Telegraph shares the same views about Adiga and The White Tiger saying that this novel splits apart Indias veneer of rise; no false fake descriptions are included in it. 24

There is no deviation from the focused issue. Adiga has devotedly concentrated on the things he wants us to know that is an uncommon characteristic found in the first novel of any writer. Peter Robins (2010) praises Aravind Adiga for maintaining the focus in the novel. Francesca Segal (2008), on the other hand, in The Observer does not find this novel much impressive. She considers it good for fun but says that there is nothing new in it. Poverty and inequality of the masses of India is not shocking to westerners who always imagine India as a land of maharajas and palaces. One is disappointed if one reads it as a social commentary but it is an interesting mingle of rage and humor. The White Tiger is boring, tedious, and unfunny but the writer is not responsible for anything which happens in the novel, Manjula Padmanabhan (2008) in Outlook India has put this novel in Breezy-absurd genre of literature that declares author unaccountable for anything happening in novel. This novel is about main stream India where Adiga lives, where life is harder than its fictional presentation in the books which promises to turn you into a millionaire in a week as Balram tells in the novel mockingly. An American business book with a title like TEN SECRETS OF BUSINESS SUCCESS Or Become an Entrepreneur in Seven easy Days Dont waste your money on these books, they are so yesterday. (Adiga, 2008, p. 25 ) Irfan Ahmed Thokar (2012) interrogates the exposition of the Indian political system which is riddled with corrupt and criminal politicians and political parties. He provides an in depth analysis of the deep rootedness of corruption in every institution of country, everything from doctors in the hospital to the ruling elite can be sold and bought for petty sum of money as he pathetically laments in Appearance vs Reality: An Exposition of the Faulty Political System of India along with observing the Althusserian State Apparatuses ISA and RSA at work. He observes the lack of accountability, entry of criminals into politics, the dominant influence of muscle power and money power, pervasive corruption, the pernicious influence of religion and caste, oppression of women and marginalized groups in the biggest democracy of the world which is rotten to the core (Thokar, 2012, p 3).

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He further penetrates the novel commenting that Balram learnt to steal, lie, cheat and kill from his master. He learns to bribe, go to malls, sees prostitutes, observes corruption and gets into all the ways of the rich by observing Ashok. He gets so ambitious that he kills his master to realize his dream and makes for his ambition through Ashoks murder. His anger is based on a bona fide philosophy leads him to his success. He starts from a bleak verve and ends with enlightened wits. By the end, he too is turned into one of the pillars of the corrupt Indian carving, as he does his job with total dishonesty, lack of dedication and sincerity. Karishna Singh (2011) observes the maintenance of Rooster Coop and the underclass subjugation in his article Aravind Aidgas The White Tiger: A Voice of the Underclass: A Post colonial Dialectics. He singles out the oppressed and crushed protagonist as a spokesman of those who are subordinate in class, race, religion, gender, age and office and he notes how the subaltern finally speaks for himself. He very aptly and skillfully sheds light on the phenomenon of lack and deprivation, loneliness and alienation, subjugation and subordination, resignation and silence, resilience and neglect effectively portrayed in the novel by Adiga (Singh, 2011, p. 99). He observes the growing globalization and technological revolution in India which is resulting in an eruption of call centers, shopping malls. Karishna Singh comments that technology itself is no revolution rather it can be taken as a route to a progressive revolution. Ashok is observed busy talking to his friends in America all the time, even when his driver is chalking out his murder on driving seat but he is unable to sniff the thoughts of man sitting next to him because he is too busy listening to ideas of people residing overseas. He exposes the corrupt education system with ignorant teachers, decaying hospitals where seats for medical specialists are auctioned and rotten zimandari system where capitalists are named for their appetites as Stork, Buffalo, Wild Boar and Raven. These corrupt to the core institutional, legal and administrative structures are the primary cause of Indias acute poverty and low life standard. A.J. Sebastian (2009) notices the apt and fair characterization of Balram where he starts as a meek school boy and gradually moves to become a self styled entrepreneur and finally metamorphoses into a cold blooded murderer to become a replica of Ashok in Poor Rich Divide in Aravind Adigas The White Tiger. He is appreciative of The White Tiger for

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being singular in its fictionalized portrayal of the relationship of Ashok and Balram (Sebastian, 2009, p, 231) Developing societies like India have many entrepreneurs and self made millionaires but majority of the people are denied health, education, nutrition and employment which would have disastrous outcome. It is an incendiary and bitterly hilarious novel. The story of this credit crunch book is an acidic view of the fearfully vast gulf between Indian millionaires and the dust poor under class dwelling in dark India. The White Tiger also looks sarcastically at the turbulence going on in global capitalism. Besides corruption, misgovernance, novel also talks about elections which have always been one of the most uncertain things in sub continent. Elections are sold, bought, mutilated and their results are pre decided. The White Tiger is condemned for its incoherence. Balram, the protagonist, writes long lengthy letters to Chinese premier for no apparent reason. It does not stick to reason. Balrams character cannot be justified easily; he has been declared a psycho path. Psycho paths are self centered, dishonest, undependable, having irresponsible behavior, devoid of guilt, empathy or love, their inter personal and romantic relationships are often callous, and casual. They always blame others for their behavioral faults. He is unconvincing. He abandons his family which is a rare step. More over his role as a representative of every poor and an entrepreneur also confuses the narratives. As a whole The White Tiger is an interesting journey through a rising global economy. It is a furious and brutal exposition of India is shining rhetoric which kicks hypocrisy, thuggery, and exploitation of India.

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Chapter 3

MATERIALS AND METHODS

3.1 Research Methodology
The study concentrates on the investigation and description of Feminist and Marxist concerns pervasive in The White Tiger and Slum Child. An eclectic approach, with the synthesis of various methodologies is adopted to explore and analyze the issues of sexuality, gender, class stratification, use of state apparatuses for the perpetuation of certain ideologies for the maintenance of the status quo to corroborate and strengthen the capitalist system and patriarchy as depicted in both of these novels. This qualitative research is interpretive and descriptive. It delves deep in the exploratory study of the said issues to comprehend the context of the intentional actions of characters. It also observes how the characters are created, metamorphosed and transformed into the societal situations for the augmentation of a deeper comprehension of the connotations of the political, social, cultural phenomena in their particular anthropological context. As this study is qualitative and deductive, it tests the existing theories by minutely reading the novels for the exploration of the themes in an argumentative way. It leaves a room for the researchers opinion to influence the textual analysis so an unquestionable objectivity cannot be ensured. Primary data, that is the text of both of the novels Slum Child and The White Tiger, is closely read and minutely scrutinized many times keeping in mind the said thematic lines to explore and expose the class and gender politics at work as manifested through these books. Secondary data consists of different available and accessible interpretive or descriptive books regarding concerned theories, themes and their application, articles, research papers, reviews and essays. Articles, Reviews and essays about Aravind Adiga, Bina Shah and their under study novels The White Tiger and Slum Child as well as about Marxist Feminist theory are studied and analyzed to write the literature review and to determine the gaps which are left by the previous researchers to delimit and spot the scope of this research.

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More over all available resources like books and articles regarding Marxist feminism are also scrutinized for a better understanding of the above mentioned thematic lines. Marxist feminist theorists particularly Michelle Barret, Martha E. Gimenez, Catherine A. MacKinnon, Angela Miles, Alan Woods, Patricia Connelly and Richard Clarke are studied and their theories are synthesized to study that how feminism and Marxism support or denounce each other and how Capitalism and Patriarchy are interlinked. A comparative study of both the novels is conducted in order to shed light on the research questions. Answers to these questions are dig out by reading and analyzing the text with the help of the hybrid theory Marxist Feminism. Incidents, passages and lines from the text of the novels are quoted to support the answers of the research questions. Bibliography is arranged in APA format as per university rules. Documentation of the research is completed through the usage of required computer soft wares.

3.2

Theoretical Framework
This is a text based analytical research where text of The White Tiger and Slum Child

are discussed and analyzed with the help of Marxist feminist theory. This theory also serves as a research tool in this research.

3.2.1 Marxist Feminism

Marxism is a discourse that seeks to challenge the class stratification and capitalism that is based on economic status and the possession of the means of production. It also establishes the divides between haves and have-nots in capitalist societies. Capitalism relegates many people to an under privileged status and heightens few to an over privileged status. Social and economic conditions shape our consciousness. This consciousness serves to maintain the status quo to facilitate the capitalist bourgeoisie. Marxism is scientific theory of human societies and is the practice of transforming them and what means rather more concretely is that the narrative Marxism has to deliver is the story of the struggles of men and women to free themselves from certain forms of exploitation and oppression.(Eagleton, 2002, p. xvii) Feminism is the struggle against discriminatory gender relations in patriarchal societies where women are suppressed by men. Women are kept from social, political, economic issues of the society and they get no voice and no room of their own. 29

Feminism is the assertion that men, either consciously or unconsciously, have oppressed women, allowing them little or no voice in political, social and economic issues of their society, by not giving voice and value to womens opinion, responses and writings, men have suppressed the female, defined what it means to be feminine and thereby devoiced, devalued, trivialized what it means to be woman. In effect men have made women the non-significant other. (Bressler, 1994, p.103) Both Marxism and Feminism are the struggles against class and gender politics respectively and they are as old as the dawn of human history. These discourses, striving to fight the discriminatory social behaviors, are inseparably intertwined with each other. Men and women are the members of the working class who are exploited at the hands of bourgeoisie. Women, as members of the working class, are doubly suppressed, devalued and dehumanized. They suffer at the hands of capitalist and at the hands of men simultaneously. Their thingification, commodification and alienation is worse than that of men as they are the valueless workers who are not even paid for the labor they perform. They face the exploitation both at market and domestic level. Marxism is quite close to the feminism and they have many shared issues and concerns regarding class stratification and sexual and societal politics. It serves as a guide for feminist theory and helps it to trace out the economic, social and political status of a female at any given time in the capitalist societies. Hybridity of feminism and Marxism results in a synthesis of theory named, Marxist Feminism. It has many political, scientific and ethical connotations for men and women and for bourgeoisie and proletariat. Feminism might have become inherently limited if it saw the sexism and female oppression from material perspective. There is no capitalist country where the working class is not only fragmented along sexual lines but also ethnic, racial and occupational lines. This produces a struggle for survival which puts men against women, ethnic groups against ethnic minorities and the latter against each other and against women. Sexism together with racism and status distinctions is thus one of the ways in which men and women are oppressed within capitalist countries and become conscious of the class struggle and fight it. (Gimenez, 1975, p. 1) 30

Marxist Feminism has two main agendas. First is to explore and expose the status of women in societies in general and in capitalist societies in particular. Second is to fight for the social, political, economic and ideological rights and to attain self sufficiency for them. This struggle against class and gender politics will ultimately result in healthy and fruitful changes in sex stratification and sex differentiation. It may simultaneously enhance the participation of women in labor market and get highly valued and well paid jobs for them. The acknowledgment of the womens domestic labor within family is another agenda in the Marxist Feminism. The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles and sex struggles because the existence of classes pre supposes the private ownership of the means of production, monogamy and therefore sexism. (Gimenez, 1975, p. 1) Sexism is a resultant of certain ideologies and societal practices which support and strengthen the female oppression, male supremacy and patriarchy. Sexism or the bias for gender has always been prevalent in human history. It is so old that it has come to be believed as a natural and universal phenomenon. That is why differences between sexes are now considered innate. Many reasons that include mans natural inclinations, social conditions and interpersonal social relations serve as the grounds for conceptualization of sexism. Human nature contains certain innate traits like utilitarianism, competitiveness and selfishness which urge him to manipulate the weak like women and the working class. Men form institutions in society for the better working of it but these manmade institutions also serve the agendas of helping man in the satisfaction of his natural urges. Marxist Feminism expostulates that social institutions like family, education centers, religion, ethics, and norms of society are the product of the ideologies which support patriarchy and capitalism. Sexism must also be explained and challenged in terms of capitalism and capitalist mode of production along with sex stratification and sex differentiation. In all societies, there is a feminine and masculine division of personality traits between men and women. They are stratified and socialized according to these traits. Men are aggressive, strong, instrumental, possessive, vibrant and courageous whereas women are

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weak, submissive, timid, shy, affective and nurturing. Social participation and power of both of the genders is formulated by this gender discrimination. Marxist Feminism talks about gender identity, class equality and abolition of patriarchy. They deduct material and economic motives behind all of these social activities and they suggest that all of them work on base superstructure pattern where economy is the determinant of all social structures and institutions. Labor class has always been involved into a struggle against the oppression of the capitalists but women are doubly oppressed within this system. They are victimized with double marginalization because of class oppression and patriarchal domination. They declare the stratification between bourgeoisie and proletariat and between men and women as irreconcilable. Positive Discrimination is also used as a tool by capitalist class and patriarchal men to support patriarchy. Few working class women are raised to higher social status, well paid jobs and privileged positions in the capitalist market. These women step out of the feminist struggle and propagate the step-by-step, starting-with-me principle, thus weakening the working class women movement. Whatever they may get as a result of this positive discrimination, their jobs will always depend upon the capitalist strength, market fluctuations and the maintenance of the existing market relations. Marxist Feminism propounds that the roots for gender politics are material. Possession of the means of production is the primary determinant of the gender discrimination. Status of females in any society can be gauged by following four structures (i) Reproduction (ii) Production (iii)Sexuality (iv) Socialization Production is the output of the working class in the labor market that is used by capitalist class whereas reproduction, sexuality and socialization depend on the social unit, named family in any capitalist society. Production is defined as mens world whereas on the contrary family is considered the womens world. Labor market is sexually segregated into two sectors; one is public sector and the other is private or domestic sector. Public sector is industrial and produces goods to be sold in the market economy on set prices while private sector is domestic and it is solely 32

responsible for the provision of labor to the public sector because the females socialize and train the participants of the labor process into obedience and hard work to earn wages. Public sector or market is for men and private or domestic sector is for women though they workers of private sector are not paid and only the people working in public sector are given the wages for their labor. Women who train the wage earners in private sphere get no monetary or real acknowledgment for the performance of the given duty because these are considered her feminine responsibilities for her expressive and nurturant talent. This contradiction and private ownership of the means of the production affects women and serves to maintain sexism and gender discrimination. Socialization is the process wherein men and women are made conscious of their different social roles and social status. They are told of these systemized roles and statuses as innate natural. Men enter into the relations of production during their socialization where they learn the ascribed roles and assume their part as men and women to play it accordingly. These role assignments have many social, economic, political and sexual connotations as they are socially constructed as a result of historically concrete legal, class and political relations and various forms of consciousness among individual members of society. Economic structure of society is built on the ground of these relations of production and their totality. This constitution of the economic structure of society built on the grounds of the relations of production is known as the economic base where upon the super structure of society comprising of legal, political, religious and familial rules and regulations is constituted. Once constructed, these relations of production and the superstructures are automatized. They become free of peoples will and any outer individual choices and can be changed only through basic structural change in social set up. Capitalist or proletariat class is divided along the above mentioned relations of production or class relations. The oppression of women is also implied by these relations as women are relegated to inferior positions than men because of their economic inferiority and dispossession of the means of production. Men are like empty slates in the society and they get the imprints of what they see or observe around them in society in socialization process. They possess varied social roles, personality traits and different social participation because they are conditioned to follow this gendered role stratification. 33

Men are viewed as the product of socialization process which integrates them into powerful and coercive social reality. (Gimenez, 1975, p. 2) The above mentioned four determinants of the male and female positions are defined as sex differentiation and sex stratification by Martha E. Gimenez. Sex differentiation might be called as labor division within and outside the family whereas sex stratification refers to the different power and prestige standards associated with male and female roles. Sex differentiation has improved mens opportunities for securing power and wealth by confining women to household tasks, child bearing and child rearing. It has declared the occupational roles as the essence of male behavior while family roles are associated with female behavior. Female is given an essentially nurturant and expressive role and male is assigned an instrumental and task oriented role in social hierarchy. Male and female role expectations are also radically different from each other though they perform their roles in society tolerably well. Still have different social power and prestige because of their different access to highly valued social resources and roles. Sex differentiation ad sex stratifications are not only intertwined but also mutually supportive, working for each others maintenance. Not only individual but aggregate gender roles are also determined by the access to money, higher education and highly paid professions which are taken as the centers of power and prestige. Individuals get access to these centers of power through their power of bargaining, their inherited assets and their determination and dedication to acquire power. It is theorized that increased participation of individuals in labor force is likely to increase their power of bargaining. This power will ultimately determine the individuals status as powerful or powerless in society. These relations of differentiation and stratification can be explored only through conscious gender relations because they will help both genders to understand the gender politics. Marxist concerns which are interlinked with the sex differentiation as well as sex stratification are supported by economic base and super structure which are propounded by Marxism for the maintenance of sexism and gender discrimination into privileged and under privileged class in capitalist societies. Capitalism is progressive as well as regressive owing to its contradictory nature. These contradictions are the existence of capitalist and proletariat class and the development of productive forces and private ownership of the means of production which is manifested through chronic unemployment and periodic economic crises. 34

Development of the productive capabilities of societies includes the development of science, technology and any other means which result in higher productivity and capacity to produce larger quantity of goods on relatively lower prices. But his capacity is kept within certain limits so as to ensure the maintenance of the status quo. These existing or higher price levels and status quo privilege the bourgeoisie and capitalist class that owns the means of production. This growth in productivity through scientific and technological development is reflected through the number of workers as the need for labor power decreases with the increase in technological use. Working class is liberated of their physical labor though automation but it also results in unemployment and starvation of the working class, along with huge unemployment, fierce competition, scarce jobs and poverty. That is why it is dreaded by the working class men and women. This process relegates women to an even worse position than that of men because women become a subsidiary component of the labor force. In the beginning of capitalism, whole family including men, women and children were part of the labor force but gradually with the passage of time and automation women became the reserved labor force that can be used when needed and dismissed when they are no longer necessary in the system. The result is the relegation of women to the level of secondary labor force. Working class men and women work on the basis of their market value and not for their creativity. It results in the alienation of the working class where they are treated as mere objects and tools for production, they become machines. Karl Marx names it Capitalist Commodification as a Process of Estrangement. Men are given an illusion of superiority in this alienated labor force and this illusion compels them to work more vehemently on their existing alienated positions as they think of themselves as masters of women and not servants of capitalists. It also gives women an illusion of sexual surrender but this power is also like other powers bestowed by capitalism because it prevails on as along as system provides them with sufficient economic superiority for the maintenance of the status quo. Estrangement of worker from the product of his labor force and the estrangement of the worker from himself that occurs when the workers labor power is sold and the worker then manufactures the product that guarantees

35

and sustains his own alienation. Thus he is engaged in an activity of alienation. (Marx, 1964, p. 110) Position of the wage laborer is femininized in a capitalist societal structure as women under patriarchy and men under capitalism are engaged in the activity of their alienation. Both can get a critical and conscious awareness of their oppression and alienation to fight it back. Sexism and capitalism are still prevalent in human societies despite centuries long wars for their abolition. Gender discrimination is not only present in market or public relations rather if women successfully wage and win the war against this gender bias out of home, they will have to launch a new fight at domestic level to get rid of the prevalent sexist behaviors and societal practices. Sexism prevails despite the changes in occupations, division of labor in the home, salary improvements and access to managerial positions. (Gimenez, 1975, p. 25) Women in all capitalist societies are considered inferior to men; they are oppressed, devalued and dehumanized. This gender politics serves the capitalists to maintain the class stratification. Thus the whole working class, including working class men and women, must wage a collect effort to break the shackles of capitalism and patriarchy thrusted upon them through pre meditated and consciously built capitalist societal structures.

3.2.2 Ideology
Ideology is the representation of production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, and anything which we say, imagine or conceive. Ideology is how a society thinks about itself, the forms of social consciousness that exist at any particular moment, ideology supplies all the terms and assumptions and frameworks that individuals use to understand their culture and ideology supply all the things that people believe in and then act on. (Althusser, 1997, p. 23) Karl Marx gave this concept of ideology in his book German Ideology that he coauthored with Fredeirich Engels. Ideology is a socially determined thought that is unaware of its being socially determined. It forms false consciousness because of its being unaware of its social determinations. Ideology is interested but theory must always be disinterested so that it

36

may peep down the societal structures to penetrate those myths which justify and legitimate status quo. Ideology includes religion, morality, laws, politics and social institutions. It may as well be called the super structure of society arising out of the economic base. Marx considered ideology a tool of social reproduction. Ruling class gets its objective representation of ideology to all social economic classes thus presenting the ideas of the ruling class as the ideas of the entire society. Ruling material force is the ruling intellectual force and the ideal expression of the governing material force in capitalist societies. For Marx, Ideology as part of the super structure generated by an economic base, works to justify this base. Ideologies present in capitalist society will explain, justify, and support the capitalist mode of production. (Althusser, 1997, p. 32) Any epochs ideology can be revealed by revealing the material conditions, means of production, relations of production, and modes of production of that society. A critical consciousness of class, gender, and oppression is necessary to challenge these structures but only consciousness will not do as it cannot translate into a tool for change. Consciousness Raising means moving from personal level where females position in society is analyzed in terms of individual in terms of individual, economic, social, class, political and sexual problems associated with femaleness to class consciousness where those specific painful, concrete forms of personal oppression are linked to their roots in the common fate of women. (Gimenez, 1975, Vol. 1, p. 22) There are two ideologies: Bourgeoisie Ideology and Socialist Ideology. Oppressed and marginalized groups like women, working groups and colonized can have oppressed consciousness and they can either choose the prevalent bourgeoisie ideology or the other socialist ideology that challenges this bourgeoisie ideology. Marxist see that powerlessness of people as externally imposed on them so they think that it can only be externally and concretely and not it is so deeply rooted into societal structure it has become identity to women and desirability to men. Human thoughts always get their genesis from the economic, social and individual conditions. These conditions determine human relationships, strengthen them or undermine 37

them. But in this process weak and poor proletariat is always exploited and played on by rich and strong bourgeoisie. Women are more oppressed and doubly exploited in at the hands of bourgeoisie and men. It is only through different political and economic strategies and the improvements in female educational and economic opportunities. Human beings are distinct from animals because of their capabilities to invent and create things in their consciousness and in reality. They later on strive to render this consciousness immortal by reproduction, recreation and perpetuating their ideology in their children by making them their replicas. Man is biologically privileged as a possessor in reproductive relations and is deprived in productive relations as a producer. Working class and females are both marginalized and subdued into otherness. A poor girls class and patriarchal experience are woven together, that is why she is doubly marginalized. Man creates the world from his own point of view and this construction becomes the ultimate truth after a certain time period. It is particularly true because man is the bread earner at his home and his family members including women and children have to yield to them whereas if one is born as woman it means she is born within an allocated space and she is confined into that space, having rare chances of getting out of her confines. Womens status is sexually determined as her choice and needs are shaped by her sexuality. Men act, women appear. Men look at women; women see themselves being looked at. Surveyor is the male, surveyed women. This describes the men to women relationship as well as women to world relationships. Women are the desired objects and men are the desired objects. Women are objectified by societys patriarchal standards. They exist in the society as objects to entertain certain needs and fulfill certain roles. Women are not born females rather they are conditioned into becoming feminine, they are feminized by society through ideology. Women are mere tokens, commodities, things and markers in a male economy. Economic forces have often been manipulated by patriarchal standards in order to oppress the women instead of challenging the economic classes. Even the idea of beauty serves the capitalism dually. Women buy the beauty products; firstly to appear beautiful to the mans gaze and come up to male standards of female beauty, secondly it benefits capitalism as it serves to concentrate wealth in few hands by buying the beauty products. Women are always made to feel ugly so they are always in a need of capitalist who can 38

provide her with the beauty products. They always need men who can make them feel they are beautiful and appreciate them that they are up to the beauty standards. That is why females allegiance to the male is stronger than any other allegiance to any other thing or any other woman around them; they are so strongly trapped in the system. Female sexuality is also mythic If I desire a house, or glass of water or a womans body, how the glass of water, the property, the womans body reside in my desire and how can my desire be anything but the consciousness of these objects as desirable? (Gimenez, 1975, p. 28) Male power is also a myth as is the female power. This myth is presented as true to the people in the same way as the false female powerlessness is presented as true. Men are taken as essential subjects in a patriarchal society and female become object and contingent in front of men. Women get their definition because of their relation to men as well as in their deficiency to men. Women are othered because of her weak material status and man becomes the centre. Language serves to strengthen the female subjugation because we think in male terms and even speak about females and femininity in a language devised by males, according to male standards in capitalist patriarchal societies. It gives us the notions of sexual difference. Language can be used to challenge sexism and patriarchy. There are binary oppositions to describe males and females which are devised by the males and which support capitalism and patriarchy by putting women on the inferior side of the binary like strong and fragile, manly and womanish, head and heart, culture and nature etc. These are the patriarchal constructions working for the status quo. Women have been written out of history that is why it is tough for them to detect the origin of their oppression because they have no shared culture and no shared ideas with anyone. Gradually freedom becomes a fear for her, a fear for the female and fear is always a prison. Women are tied to the men through residence, service, home, kids, house work and economic conditions. Her intellectual growth and freedom is trapped and stunted. Women are not born feminine, they are feminized. They are taught and socialized into being females, good mothers, obedient daughters and faithful wives. Gender roles have not been changed by the changes in social set up or by the entrance of female into work place 39

rather it has doubled her duties ad now she expected to balance her family and professional life at the same time. She has to look good, bear and rear children, please the boss, cook, clean, and take care of all the needs of the family. Man is the servant at work and master at home but woman is a servant at home as well as work place. , Consciousness Raising is the only remedy for these exploitative ideologies and social conditioning. Feminists must grasp this idea that they cannot distort or shatter a reality before building it. Women need to realize the exploitation and exploitive social practices. All the things, like females bondage, complicity, damage, inferiority, and degradation operate as the barriers for her conscious raising instead of serving as means to get access to the reality in order to change it. Human interpretation is always subjective, human beings do not look at the world in the way it is rather they see things as they are so world becomes a reality of our own ideas, thoughts and socialization process. Human beings need to know the ways in which patriarchy and capitalism dictates their lives to learn that how they can challenge these systems in order to get free from their vicious grip.

3.2.2.1

Family Ideological State Apparatus

Concept of family has been prevalent in human societies since the dawn of human history and is treated as an unchallengeable, permanent and inevitable societal structure. But the basis of this structure and children, motherhood, wife, and womens identity are ideological. They are not natural and biological but are perpetuated through ideology and maintained through ideology. Ideologies are designed to protect the existence of the hidden services provided by the family for the political capitalist economy. This all contribute to the maintenance of the unjust capitalist system, for particular economic, social and gender disadvantages to the females within the system. Family and society is virtually co-extensive. Capitalist relations of production and reproduction are intertwined and interlinked as family has been a productive as well as a reproductive unit historically. Division between family and capitalism got its genesis with monogamy, rise of private property and subjugation. Gender, masculine and feminine ideologies are constructed in the family ideology. Thus, sexism and gender politics is not an automatic process but a result of a long and pre meditated historical evolution. Heterosexual societies are essentially patriarchal. Feminism suggests that women have been disadvantaged by men in past societies and they are so in todays contemporary 40

society. Their lives are more difficult in third world countries. They suffer the exploitation because of historical, political and economic difficulties. This is the meeting point of Marxism and feminism, so Marxist feminist suggest that women have been deprived to strengthen the capitalism and to maintain the class stratification. Patriarchy and capitalism result in the exploitation and oppression of women and it can be changed only through fundamental social transformation. Patriarchys chief institution is family. Family, apparently a natural unit, is actually a cultural creation. Ideology serves to present family as a natural and inevitable institution. It exalts family to an ideal status as a centre of peace, unity and plenty but these apparently ideal images can be sites of violence, depression and despair in actuality. Nuclear family is the part of overall superstructure of capitalist society. Womens role in society takes up three different structures; reproduction, sexuality and socialization. They rear the children and teach them the blind acceptance of authority and make an obedient and faithful generation of workers. Wives provide, out of responsibility of the marriage bond, many domestic services like cleaning, cooking, serving the family members. Marriage is a contract that is justifies by love on emotional grounds. It binds women into a labor contract for domestic services. Woman provide free services for getting attached to a male, this male ultimately defines her status and being in society and she is identified by the name of the male. She does not get any monetary pay for her jobs, whatever she gets, it does not come as a pay but as a gift. Husband only maintains her labor power because he fulfills her basic needs so that she may continue her domestic duties. Male is defined in terms of their work and their value in society but women are defined by their sex. Marxist Feminism believes that socialization process, management of dissatisfaction, role allocation betwixt men and women, and their career prospects support men and capitalist patriarchal structure of societies. Socialization also includes appropriate role socialization. Women socialize their daughters to show dependence, obedience, conformity, domesticity whereas boys are encouraged to be independent, dominant, competitive, and self reliant. Family and education ISAs work together, simultaneously strengthening the capitalist patriarchy. Young children perceive the gender roles to be natural an inevitable when they see their parents and people around performing these roles.

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Wives provide emotional support and catharsis for husband through domestic violence and making the work place exploitation and oppression bearable for the husbands. Women absorb all the frustrations of the husband which they get from their capitalist bosses and work places. Otherwise these frustrations might turn towards the capitalist system. Frustration of the working class and male capacity for violence against women is the reason for domestic violence. Most of the time, such cases of domestic violence are not reported for the fear of reprisals. Capitalism and accorded bourgeoisie forms gave women the dual status of wife and mother. Bourgeoisie man looks for a counter part in woman, not for an equal. Need for a family institution and female obedience is emphasized. Womens biological destiny as a mother becomes a cultural vocation; she achieves her social definition from the way she brings up her children. Her inability to take up strenuous physical labor and suitability to socialize the children springs from her psychological conditioning. But suitability is not inevitability. People falsely perceive from social structures that men and women inherited the social roles because they have been performing them for many centuries. These stereotypes about the roles of men and women are cultural constructions rather than biological determinations and they can be changed through various political and economic strategies. Mass media present typical female images, print media have passive, obedient and meek good girls and loud, confident and courageous bad girls. Each element of female gender stereotype is in fact sexual. Easy sexual access of female is her vulnerability, disabled resistance coming out of trained physical weakness is passivity, and pleasure in violation of male makes her masochistic in male dictionary. Inheritance was matrilineal in human societies in the beginning but gradually, with the increase of wealth and use of money, it became patrilineal and supported patriarchy. Establishment of monogamy, females fidelity towards her man, and her position as a servant was the resultants of this social transformation. She became a private servant and target of exploitation in a monogamous relationship with the man. Women are different from any other oppressed and exploited group i.e. working class, minorities because they form the half of the world population. They are oppressed on different grounds because they are offered a universe named family to prevent them from entering into mens universe. Their exploitation at work is compounded with their relegation 42

to home. Thus the subservience in mens world, the world of production is obscured by apparent dominance in another world, family. This dominance is merely an illusion as man runs the household and being the bread winner, he is the decision maker where woman is reduced to the mere status of a servant. Females are a victim of direct physical appropriation as they are appropriated into physical labor and are reduced to mere material objects. Guillaumin calls this sexage, this sexage takes place in four forms 1. Appropriation of females time: Marriage contract does not talk about her time. She has no specified pay, holiday or working hours. 2. Appropriation of her the products of her body: Children are given the name of their fathers, though they are produced by mothers. Legally they belong to men. 3. Females Sexual Obligation: it is common in marriage and prostitution but prostitution is legalized and well organized as men have to pay for the sexual services that they get and there is time limit for the services given by the prostitute. 4. Their obligation to take care of the kids, the family, grandparents and all the family members whether old or young. It is apparent that Male is benefitted more than the female by all the actions of a female. It is hard to break through the male chauvinism while living in a patriarchal society. But it is necessary to disturb and shatter the status quo in order to witness women not only as a force but also as a reason. Lesson is that liberation of women can be achieved only if all four structures in which they are integrated are transformed; Production, reproduction, sexuality, and socialization. Modification of any of them can be offset by a reinforcement of another. There is considerable support for family within working class as family helps its members to cope with the injustices of the society. False class consciousness let not people recognize family as a source of oppression. That is why people need to have a correct class consciousness and political awareness to challenge and change the system. Marx proclaims the abolition of family because in capitalist system he sees husband as master and the wife as servant; husband is bourgeoisie and wife proletariat. Working women should be treated equally because great social changes are impossible without female

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ferment. He focuses on the public sphere of the female reproductive and social concerns such as contraception, sterilization, abortion, and sexual harassment. Marx suggests that women should also be included in struggle against capitalism; feminine ferment is needed for great social change so males and female should be considered equals.

3.2.2.2

Educational ISA

Formal education and educational institutes are the centers where kids are trained for the consumption of capitalism system. They are given certain rules and regulations and obedience to authority. Their creativity generally carries no meaning over there but they are simply judged and awarded according to one single standard that is the acceptance of the system and status quo and blind obedience to authorities. Through this long process, they learn to accept capitalism and class stratification without any questions. As they have been taught in the schools, that they need to be obedient and follow all the rules and regulations to get in to proper jobs and that their survival is near to impossible in case they are unemployed, children struggle hard to survive and accept the capitalism. Louis Althusser presented the image of a school as a place where all the necessary technical skills of the labor force are transmitted to the children simply and unproblematically. This transformation of skills is combined with the discipline and respect for the existing relations of production which enables capitalism reproduce itself passively. It gives a representation of imaginary relationship of individual to their real conditions of existence. Academic institutions teach and socialize people into their various positions in the class structures. Schooling is connected neatly with wider capitalist society. It tidily reproduces capitalist social relations: relations of domination and sub-ordination. Education has an emancipatory impact as well. Beyond the formal educational institutes like schools, colleges and universities, the real class consciousness can be gained through informal education like society, family, home, political institutions. A keen and willing insight and observation into social constructions and the workings of political, economic and social institutions within society can serve as an eye opener. It helps and supports one to understand and challenge the exploitative cultural constructions and ideologies.

3.2.2.3 Religion
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"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." (Marx, 1968, p. 3) Karl Marx declared religion the opium of the people. In those times, opium was a healing drug. So he said that religion solaces, heals and pleases those who are being crushed under the heavy burden of class division. Religion is an important tool of ideological state apparatus as well. The capitalists use religion for their own benefit. They exploit the poor by using it as a tool and confining them to set boundaries by perpetuating different agendas and ideologies. In most of the religion, people are promised fruits in the world here after if they spend a simple, non luxurious life in the world. The poor are made to believe that god is with those who do not indulge in the luxuries of life and worldly pleasures. Under this ideology, the poor do not question the luxuries of the rich and spend their days in utter deprivation, believing that they will get a reward in here after. They also get consoled by the ideas about God and His teachings because they know that the powerful capitalist of the earth would not pay heed to anything they do until they bring a revolution.

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Chapter 4

DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS

4.1 Class and Gender Politics
Aravind Adigas The White Tiger and Bina Shahs Slum Child are two brutally realistic depictions of class stratification. This stratification is based on money and the power resulting from the possession of money and the means of production. Laila is more oppressed and exploited in this class politics owing to her feminine position. Social, economic, physical, political, and gender pressures cause greater hurdles in her struggle for survival than that of Balram because she is one of the softer sex and has lesser capacity for violence than Balram. Class politics is maintained in such a way as to keep the female in a weaker position to ensure the capitalism and patriarchy in the societal structure. The novels, when seen comparatively, show that capitalism and patriarchy are inseparably intertwined in a relation where they support and strengthen each other. A study of both of these narratives with chosen theoretical perspective is given below

4.1.1 Analysis of The White Tiger

Societies are stratified into various classes. The most crucial divide is money and the possession of means of production. These divisions have further sub divisions. There are fissures within fissures and classes within classes in sub continent. The protagonist of The White Tiger, Balram belongs to the lowest societal stratum. He names it Darkness. He resides in Laxman Garh that is an underdeveloped and neglected village in rural India; India of Darkness.

4.1.1.1

Class Stratification

Balram informs us that India is divided into two countries into one; one is India of Light and second is India of Darkness. Balrams village Laxman Garh is a part of Dark India which fades the beauty of shining India of Light. He tells India is two countries into one: an India of Light, and an India of Darkness. The ocean brings light to my country. Every place on the map of India near ocean is well off. But the river brings Darkness to India the black river. (Adiga, 2008, p. 14)

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India of Light and Darkness, both of these Indias are like two different ends of the world. They are a contrast to each other. India of Darkness is for the poor, working, labor class whereas India of Light is for the rich, capitalist and powerful class. Both of the classes are residing in different worlds and have nothing to do with each others world. This is the first stratification. A place in India, at least the third of the country, a fertile place, full of rice fields and wheat fields and ponds in the middle of those fields choked with lotuses and water lilies, and water buffaloes wading through the ponds and chewing on the lotuses and lilies. Those who live in this place call it the Darkness. (Adiga, 2008, p. 14) Second division is based on the size of the belly. Rich class has eaten up everything, including poors rights, resources of the country, and ever ything they could lay their hand upon to satisfy their appetite whereas poor do not get even the three times meal a day because they are left with nothing. Their food is inside the big bellies of the rich. People are stratified on the basis of their appetites. The rich has a lust to gobble and digest everything in the country. The rich are the people who eat and the poor are the people who are eaten up. Those that were the most ferocious, the hungriest have eaten everyone else up and grown big bellies. That was all that counted now, the size of your belly. It didnt matter whether you are a woman, or a Muslim, or an untouchable: anyone with a belly could rise up in the old days there were thousands of castes and destinies in India. These days there are just two castes: Men with big bellies and men with small bellies. (Adiga, 2008, p. 64) Among many divisions, sub-divisions and fissures in Indian society that Adiga highlights in The White Tiger, one is on the basis of the liquor that people drink. There are English liquor men and Indian liquor men. English liquor is for the rich of India and Indian liquor is for the poor of India. The people who buy English liquor are privileged and carry an air of importance about them; liquor sellers provide their orders quicker than the orders of Indian liquor men. On the other hand, the buyers of Indian liquor are underprivileged; they get their turn late in the row, they have to wait longer than others to get their liquor order from the sellers as they belong to the servant class, the poor. In this country, we have two kinds of men: Indian liquor men and English 47

liquor men. Indian liquor is for village boys like me toddy, arrack, country hooch. English liquor, naturally, is for the rich. Rum, whisky, beer, gin anything the English left behind. (Adiga, 2008, p.73) There are categories of the servants too; servant no 1 and servant no 2. Adiga narrates Balrams experience of buying English liquor for his rich masters and the deep sense of depravity that arises in the servants for their inability to drink Black Dog as it belongs to their masters, it is a luxury only for the rich. He tells us He wanted to hold the bottle; he wanted to hold the full virgin bottle of first class whisky in his hand. He wanted to imagine that he was buying it for himself. (Adiga, 2008, p.75) People are recognized by their vehicles and they are treated accordingly. The lowest class rides bicycles, lower class rides motorcycles, and the rich cruise around on cars. When Ashoks wife, Pinky crushes a child under her car while driving drunk, they persuade their servant Blaram to confess the crime in her place so that she may avoid the punishment. Balram states that A man on bicycle getting killed the police even do not have to register the case. A man on a motor bike getting killed they would have to register that. A man in a car getting killed they would have thrown me in the jail. (Adiga, 2008, p. 168) In The White Tiger, the capital of India, Delhi, is also divided into two capitals for two Indias. One is the capital of the Dark India and the other is the capital of the India of Light. There are places for the rich and places for the residence of the poor. Delhi is then capital of not one but two countries two Indias. The Light and the Darkness both flow in Delhi. Gurgaon, where Mr. Ashok lived, is end. Full of things that the modern world had forgotten all about rickshaws, old stone buildings, and Muslims. (Adiga, 2008, 251) There is another division between men, which is pointed out by drivers when Balram moves to Delhi with his masters. Drivers have their own categories of men where they divide people into first-gear men who start everything with interest but nothing holds their attention for long. They cannot become entrepreneurs. Mr Ashok was a classic first gear man. He liked to start things but nothing 48

held his attention for long. (Adiga, 2008, p.142) Thus, societies do not have one division rather there are division within division and fissures within fissures to stratify the people into classes and maintain these classes.

4.1.1.2

Living Conditions

India of Darkness is the India near river, the dark river. Balram tells that his village, Laxman Garh, is near river Ganga The Black River. Living conditions are the worst imaginable in Laxman Garh. The poor live a life worse than animals. Their river deposits the filth and garbage of India of Light. Residents of darkness receive only the garbage from the progress of shining India. Balram warns that I urge you not to dip in the Ganga, unless you want to your mouth full of faeces, straw, soggy parts of human bodies, buffalo carrion, and seven different kinds of industrial acids. (Adiga, 2008, p.15) The poor are deprived of even basic necessities of life which are food, health, clothes, residence, and education. Their children are born in poverty and they live the poverty stricken lives as they reconcile with their fates. They do not challenge the vicious circle of poverty in which they are caught by being born in the darkness. Laxman Garh, the microcosm of Dark India presents a desolate image, a dystopia of the Indian society. Things in Dark India are propagated as perfect but this propagation is completely opposite to reality. The portrayal is like a paradise but the reality of Laxman Garh is a hell. Laxman Garh is your typical India village paradise, adequately supplied with electricity, running water and working telephones; and that the children of my village, raised on a nutritious diet of meat, eggs, vegetables, lentils will be found when examined with tape measures and scales, to match up the minimum height and weight standards set by the united nations and weight standards set by the united nations and other organizations whose treaties our prime minister has signed and whose forums he so regularly and pompously attends. Ha! Electricity poles: defunct, Water tap: broken, Children: too lean and short for their age and with over sized heads from 49

which vivid eyes shine like the guilty conscience of government of India. (Adiga, 2008, p. 19-20) There is no hope of light in the Dark India. Whoever wants to lighten up his life, he moves to the India of Light, to the big city. Peoples class has its imprints on every aspect of their life. They can be distinguished as residents of darkness even in the light. Their appearance, their outlook, behavior, their lives, everything depicts their origin, their base. Thousands of people live on the sides of the roads in Delhi. You can tell by their thin bodies, filthy faces, by the animal like way they live under the huge bridges and over-passes, making fires, and washing and taking lice out of their hair while the cars roar past them. (Adiga, 2008, p. 120) The clouds on the heads of these people are without any silver lining. They have given up the fight. Balram succeeds in breaking the shackles barring him from entering into light because he fights against the system which hinders his progress forward. That is the only distinction between Balram and other good-for-nothing residents of darkness who just while their time and waste their life while roaming around though they can be used to fulfill the rising need for man power. They are unaware of their lifes worthlessness. There, every morning, tens of thousands of young men sit in the tea shops, reading the news paper or lie on a chorpoy humming a tune, or sit in their rooms talking to the photo of a film actress. They have no jobs to do today. They know they wont get any job today. They have given up the fight.(Adiga, 2008, p. 54) When Balram moves to Delhi, he sees new malls, mansions and huge buildings being built. The rich who are getting the buildings built do not care for the environmental conditions or for the impacts of these malls on the poor. Their sole concern is their mercenary profit. The builders of these malls live on the foot paths; they are not permitted to step inside these buildings. The rich of the Delhi has built this part of Gurgaon with no lawns or play grounds it was just buildings, shopping malls, hotels and more buildings. There was a pavement outside but it was for the poor to live on. (Adiga, 2008, p. 72) All these construction workers belonged to the darkness. They have nothing to do 50

with the buildings that they build. The beautiful and enchanting things do not belong to them. They are destined to the life of misery, oppression and exploitation. Once the buildings are built, the construction workers are not even allowed to enter into these buildings. They lived away from the buildings, in heaps of filth, in stinking stagnant waters and without food or clean drinking water. Two contrasting worlds exist within at a distance of few feet. The men were defecating in the open like a defensive wall in front of the slum, making a line that no respectable human should cross these people were building homes for the rich but they lived in tents covered with tarpaulin sheets, and partitioned into lanes of sewage. It was even worse than Laxman Garh. (Adiga, 2008, p. 260) Adiga depicts realistically the living conditions of the poor, ultimately establishing that it is almost impossible to get out of this vicious circle of poverty which is inflicted on them.

4.1.1.3

Dress

These populaces are so engaged in the pursuit of their bread and butter that they have not got time for any other activity in their life. They have a strange sense of dress and food because they have reconciled with the reality that they cannot afford the food and dress like that of the rich. Balram notices the dressing sense of Ashok, his choice of colors and prints and tries to imitate them. He gives away his own ways in order to appear and become like Ashok, to become a master. Blue chequered, polyester shirt, orange polyester trousersthose are the kind of cloth sir which would appeal to a servants eye. (Adiga, 2008, p. 22) Balram alters his dressing style. Those mansions and malls, where the people from darkness are never allowed and which have certain dress and shoe rules for entrance, are accessible to him because he tries to like a master. He wears white, decent colored T- shirts with simple or minimal prints on them. He changes his appearance and his changed appearance changes his worth. Dress determines his value. Another man was watching the pit with me a well dressed man in a shirt and tie and trousers with nice pleats. Normally this kind would never talk to me but he misunderstood me because of my dress. (Adiga, 2008, p. 158) Balram is astonished to see the dresses of Pinky Madam, Ashoks wife. He has never 51

seen a woman in Darkness wearing such dainty and fine attires. She wore trousers; I gaped. Who had ever seen a woman dressed in trousers before except in the movies. (Adiga, 2008, p. 76) He is tempted by Pinkys deep cleavage showing shirts and wonders how his master let her wear such clothes when going out of home. Balram keeps glancing at her in the rear view mirror and controls his instinct to touch her. His sexuality is instigated because of Pinkys revealing dresses.

4.1.1.4

Food

The poor lead whole of their lives in the singular pursuit of earning their bread and butter that is why they are alienated. They have to choose between untiring work and death by starvation. They manage to get three meals a day through sheer hard work. This keeps them in a constant struggle for survival where they are unable to pay any attention towards higher purposes of life or challenging the status quo. Balram is wonder struck when he sees his masters eating chicken and best dishes whenever they feel like eating them. He recalls I had never eaten a regular chicken dish in my life until then; it made you feel like a king, eating chicken Sunday after Sunday and then licking your fingers. (Adiga, 2008, p. 67) When Pinky leaves Ashok and returns to America, leaving him desperate and neglected, Balram tries to console his master. He takes him to dine out with him at a restaurant of the low class and orders numerous dishes for him so that Ashok may pick what he wants to eat. When his orders is served, he wonders at the quantity and choice of food for the rich and the poor Enough to feed a whole family or one rich man. (Adiga, 2008, p. 74) The things which will satiate the hunger of a whole family in Darkness are unable to satisfy one rich man because his greed is too big to be satiated. He always wants more.

4.1.1.5

Health

Balram pronounces in The White Tiger that The diseases of the poor never get treated. (Adiga, 2008, p. 123) This proves to be true as he informs that a lot of news comes from the darkness but since it is from darkness so it is all bad news. Darkness is not a place to expect something 52

good from. People suffer from various diseases owing to the lack of proper health facilities, clean drinking water, sufficient and healthy food and proper medicines. Balrams mother dies because of an illness, his father too suffers because of this and many other people from darkness also become the victim of the same fate. Balram tells us that many residents of the darkness suffer from a disease in which their skin is rotten because of red marks. The bodies of the poor men depict their class. Their lives and the way they lead it, leaves its imprints on their bodies. As is stated by Balram The story of a poor mans life is written on his body, in a sharp pen. (Adiga, 2008, p. 27) Balram narrates the story of his fathers struggle which, as he tells us, is carved on his body. Their bodies are hard, tough, rough and replete with marks, wounds, cuts and scars whereas the rich mens bodies are white, soft, spick and span. A rich mans body is like a premium cotton pillow, white and soft and blank. Ours are different. My fathers spine was a knotted rope; the clavicle curved around his neck in high relief, like a dogs collar; cuts and nicks and scars, like little whip marks in his flesh, ran down his chest and waist, reaching down below his hip bones into his buttocks. (Adiga, 2008, p. 27) Worsened health conditions are further aggravated because of the political interference in the medical department. Hospitals in Dark India present a dark image where anyone can bribe an affluent politician to get appointed as a doctor in the hospital. Foundation stones for hospitals are laid before every election to earn the good will of the people but once the political leaders win their desired seats in national assemblies, they never look back to these foundation stones to build the hospitals. Three different foundation stones for a hospital, laid by three different politicians before three different elections. (Adiga, 2008, p. 49) Hospitals lack doctors. Posts are vacant. The poor suffer because of the unavailability of doctors because they cannot afford to go to the private hospitals. Blaram is told, at being enquired, that the posts are sold and bought at different rates by the political leaders of the electoral areas. Every time the post falls vacant, the great socialist let all the big expoit doctors know that he is having an auction for the post. The going rate for the 53

post is about four hundred thousand rupees these days. (Adiga, 2008, p. 49) These doctors who have bought the seats to practice their art do not get to the hospitals regularly. Being completely deprived of the sympathy for their patients, their sole aim is to fill their pockets with the money. They take their revenge for being white collared servants in a capitalist system which results in the even tougher circumstances and worse health conditions for the poor. As the posts of the doctors are for sale, in the same way the medicines and treatment are also for sale and inaccessible for the poor. People do not even get the clean water to drink. They suffer from malnutrition which causes them to fall a prey to various diseases from which they cannot recover because of the lack of medical facilities and insensitivity of the government. Balram laments the situation There is no water in the taps and what do you people in Delhi give us? You gave us mobile phone. Can a man drink a phone when he is thirsty? Women walk for miles every morning to find a bucket of clean water? (Adiga, 2008, p. 269) The poor cannot even get water, the primary element of existence. Everyone needs water but woman are the ones to fetch it from faraway places. This is a tradition that is deep rooted in patriarchal societies though the men are physically stronger than women and they are more suitable for fetching water.

4.1.2 Analysis of Slum Child

Laila, protagonist of Slum Child, belongs to the lowest class of society regarding the possession of means of production, power, religion and education. She is a Christian child who resides in Issa colony which is a neglected and othered part of a cosmopolitan city, Karachi. Being a girl, living in a capitalist patriarchal society, she suffers more than a boy on account of her gender as she is vulnerable to physical, psychological, sexual, religious, and gender oppression and class discrimination.

4.1.2.1

Class Stratification

Class stratification is apparent even in the chapter division of Slum Child as it is divided into two parts; first part is Slum and the second part is Mansion. It clearly depicts that how slum and mansion comprise of two different aspects and ways of life which can never be combined that is why there is a need to narrate both of these life styles in two different parts. 54

Issa colony, where Laila resides, is the other half of the country, which has nothing to do with the development and dazzling brightness of the cosmopolitan centre. Living conditions are grim there. She narrates in the novel that how her colony came into existence What had started off as a few tenuous huts on the outskirts of town had doubled, tripled quadrupled in size and volume; the huts had become shacks and the shacks in time had been cemented by the residents and made permanent. (Shah, 2010, p. 7) Another class is narrated in Slum Child when Laila goes to beach; she witnesses a quarrel between a policeman and a motorcyclist who got into an argument. Policeman beats motorcyclist black and blue for his insolence. Had there been a car driver in his place, policeman would not have dared to humiliate him. Masses are divided according to the vehicles that they use. There is the lowest category of those who own bicycles, then the people who ride motorcycles and those who have cars to enjoy the air conditioned and unpolluted environment while cruising around. An apparent divide in Slum Child is the gender division. Men and women are compared and contrasted. Their lives are put opposite to each other. It is made apparent that the womens lives are not independent. The large part of their lives depend upon the men in their lives or the men who do not belong to their lives. Laila narrates in Slum Child that her mother has to be very cautious when she is getting back from the rich homes where she works as a maid because of the fear of physical, psychological and sexual harassment from men on the streets and in the buses She would don her black burqa and ride home again on the bus back to Issa colony. And walk for another half an hour from the bus stop in darkness with another woman or two next to her for protection from the strange men who lurked at the bus stops and haunted the roads. (Shah, 2010, p. 59) The cosmopolitan city, Karachi, where Laila lives is partitioned into two. One part is lit, globalized and developed where the rich reside and which is a no-go area for Laila because she is a girl from the slums. There are divisions in the residents of Issa colony. There are poor, poorer and the poorest people living in the slums. This hierarchy is based on their occupations; the amount of money one earns or the resources of production one owns.

55

In the colony hierarchy, the lowest of the low were the ones who had to beg on the streets. Just above the beggars were those who sold combs or newspapers, once in a while, humiliating items like balloons or fake beards. I barely knew about the ones who became criminal it is safe to say that nobody in the slum was unemployed; everyone had their own line of work, legitimate or otherwise, and everyone worked hard to keep themselves and their families fed. (Shah, 2010, p. 64) Whereas the rich housing societies are a sight from heaven I couldnt help gaping at the opulence, the luxury that was defense the housing society that was built back in 1960s by army officer, on plots of land gifted to them after years of loyal service. (Shah, 2010, p. 145) Slums are the residence for the poor. They are underdeveloped part than the posh areas. All the members of family do not work but few earn and others burn. Many residents of slums are like parasites who do not work rather they dwell and thrive on the money of the earning members of family. Laila states in Slum Child Slums; as anyone conversant with the subject will tell you, are completely self sufficient. Not symbiotic beings but parasites that feed off their hosts for so long that they strengthen and grow into entire world outside. (Shah, 2010, p. 06) Laila goes to these places with her mother to beg her masters for Lailas treatment. She is stunned at the sights but is well aware that this beauty and abundance can never belong to her. I stared fearfully at the house that loomed up above me, a citadel on a mountain that I could never hope to climb There was such a vast difference between her world and mine her decorum and her bearing, her manners and her style that I simply could not take my eyes off her. (Shah, 2010, p. 75) A web of shopping malls and plazas is knitted in the city which is build by the poor and is confined to the use of the rich. Once the buildings are finished, the poor cannot even step inside them. Where rich people buy what they do not need. (Shah, 2010, p. 221) Stratification of societies into classes, divisions, fissures and layers is based either on 56

money or gender. Capitalism and patriarchy serve and strengthen each other. Class division is more tenuous for women because they are doubly oppressed.

4.1.2.2

Living Conditions

Grim and suffocating living conditions are narrated by Laila is Slum Child which shows that the poor live in misery wherever they live. The same filthy waters, dung heaps and unhygienic conditions are found in all the localities of the poor as government pays no heed to the improvement of their life. They poor do are non-existent for the ruling rich but in the days of election when politicians and the ruling parties need the poor to get elected by using their votes. I didnt want to end up in filthy water, which overflowed from the drains, stinking of urine and excrement and chemicals. The whole slum smelled like that anyway. And I dint want it on my skin with the taps running dry again till Friday. (Shah, 2010, p. 01) Laila narrates the filthy and poor living conditions in Issa colony. The poor people of the slums are socialized in those conditions in such a way that it is almost impossible for them to get rid of the effects of it. They breathe and live in these conditions. Their class is imprinted in all the ways of their living. Laila tells in Slum Child about the working men who spend their lives laboring in the fields He had reeked of the fields no matter how long he had lived in colony; his mannerism was gauche and crude and he would have a slightly squat way of walking, unhurried, majestic, as if there was all the time in the world to feel the ground under his feet. (Shah, 2010, p. 95) The same conditions are prevalent in all the slums where the poor live. Laila, a child born and bred in slums, is wonder struck to see the buildings arising around her in the lit part of the cosmopolitan city, revealing a completely new world of unknown images for her. It looked to me like a castle built of glass and steel, with giant bill boards at the top advertising things that I have never seen or heard of. A steady stream of cars and four-wheel-drive-jeeps let passengers off at its vast entry way. (Shah, 2010, p 33) The poor live in a disorderly manner in mismanaged areas which come into existence without any pre planning. Localities for the rich are well planned and well managed that is a 57

complete contrast to the neglected, underdeveloped slum or dark areas. Laila presents a picture of Issa colony which is not very different from Balrams Laxman Garh. block of sky blue cement huts where I lived. It was flooded again as happened every other day, with murky green sewage water, and someone had thoughtfully placed cement blocks in an irregular pattern amid the sludge to from a make shift path of stepping stones. (Shah, 2010, p. 23) The above mentioned conditions are in no way comparable to the luxurious lives of the rich. Jumana, Lailas elder sister, could not afford a decent and warm place even when she is on her death bed. She spends her last days in the shivering cold and in an uncomfortable bed. Jumana lay on a small cot against the wall: dingy and rusted, it looked a hundred years old. The tiny one-room block was barely large enough for two peoplethe tin roof amplifies the cold and drew the wind deep in, turning our house into iceboxes. (Shah, 2010, p. 93) Madam Ansaris house is an unimaginable luxury for Laila. Laila gapes at the beauty, decorum and abundance when she goes there. This increases her sense of depravity. the silk curtains tied by heavy gilt ropes, a huge television screen that hung from the wall like a painting, an acre long bed covered in rich emeralds and turquoise and a large air conditioner. (Shah, 2010, p. 82) She finds it hard to believe that such a place can exist in her city, so dominant is the poverty around her in slums. After physical harassment during her bus journey towards Defense, she is so wonder-struck to behold the awe inspiring buildings around her that she feels it impossible to be a part of this world. I thought I must have died in bus and ended in heaven so different were my surroundings from anything I had ever seen before. (Shah, 2010, p. 69) In Pakistan, a capitalist patriarchy, the society is divided along religious, racial, class, and gender lines. A synthesis of all of these divides leaves imprints on Lailas life which makes her life harder for her than that of any man in the same circumstances.

4.1.2.3

Dress

Laila, being a girl of the working class and a house maid, cannot afford to buy the decent clothing, let alone the branded ones. All she does is to derive pleasure from wearing 58

those hand-me-downs which are worthless for the rich. The poor only gets the throw-aways of the rich. Laila wonders after wearing the clothes of her masters daughters and her mistress that what the people think of her in those clothes. When Lailas school teacher comes for condolence at Jumanas death, Laila feels that she, an educated, independent working lady, can not belong to the slums. Her clean new clothes seemed out of place in our street where everyone wore hand-me-down of hand-me-downs. (Shah, 2010, p. 112) The people in the slum never get to eat a food to their fill rather none of their needs are satisfied completely. There are always holes and gapes in their lives which are never filled. Their health is poor and the hand-me-downs of the rich never fit them properly. This was Halima, always thin, never a full meal in her stomach. Her elbows and knees stuck out through her clothes. (Shah, 2010, p. 79) Laila gapes when she hears of her madams dressing room and sees it over loaded with dresses. She might have worn these dresses once or twice and thrown them away. A second room just for her dresses, I said incredulously. (Shah, 2010, p. 75) The poor are unaware of the hygiene because they have a lot more than this to worry about. They are too engaged in the pursuit of earning bread and butter that they are left with no time to pay attention to clean attires. Their dresses always smell of the hard work and struggle. a strange man clad in filthy grey shalwar qameez whose folds were stiff with dirt and sweat. (Shah, 2010, p. 02)

4.1.2.4

Food

The poor live their whole life in the single pursuit of managing to get three meals in a day to their fill. This activity alienates them from rest of the human beings. They become the alienated workers. On the contrary, the rich not only fulfill their own needs rather they throw away a lot of food to the poor. Many of the house maids depend on the give-aways of their masters. Laila in Slum Child narrates the divide between the poor and the rich. driving a great amount of pleasure from receiving the meat which was given from the richer families to the poorer ones. (Shah, 2010, p. 56) Laila, at the start of the Slum Child, remembers the food being cooked at her home which clearly states the difference of the food between the rich and the poor. The poor cannot 59

think more than lentils and bread whereas the rich are served countless delicious dishes. Her idea of the good food is daal roti and her mouth waters to think of this I dreamed of hot, fresh daal with a steaming puffy roti to go with it. My stomach squeaked expectantly at the thought. (Shah, 2010, p. 02) When they go on a picnic, Lailas whole family is glad at having a day away from the trials and turbulences of their routine life. Her idea of the best food might be the worst of the rich. As she states Salim bought us roasted channas, and packets of sweets and bottles of cold drinks and we munched and ate happily, filling our stomachs with cheap, simple food and drink. (Shah, 2010, p. 35) Jumana cooks the food at the burner. The burner is as ragged and shabby as are the residents of darkness. It has not been changed even after years, as the years of usage has rendered it grimy and black. Smoke arises out of it, blackening the utensils and pots as well as their lives. Burner it was grimy little thing, blackened by years and years of use, attached to the illegal gas pipe outside by a meager tube and was known to spit out clouds of black smoke from time to time. (Shah, 2010, p. 08) Even clean drinking water is inaccessible to them. Government has not supplied them with the potable water and they cannot afford to buy the mineral water for them. it looked cleaner than any water that I had ever been privileged in my short life. (Shah, 2010, p. 153) The above mentioned standards are no match to the abundance of foods which are cooked in the kitchens of the rich. the grand kitchen where meals for thirty to forty people were made by two cooks (Shah, 2010, p. 76) Dogs of the rich are more important than the poor servants. The animals of the rich lead a life better than that of the poor. Imagining the quantities of meat, it would take to assuage those angry dogs appetites (Shah, 2010, p. 70)

4.1.2.5

Health

Lailas mother has been passing through the strenuous trials and turbulences of life 60

which leave their irremovable marks on her body. Her lifelong and never ending struggle is imprinted on her body, Laila tells in Slum Child about the marks at her mothers hands which simultaneously reflect Lailas future too because the poor are caught in a vicious circle of poverty where it is impossible for them to get out. The same fate awaits the mother, daughters and the coming generations unless someone dares to break out of the rooster coop as did Balram. ...the backs of her hands like dead leaves, the flesh papery and dry, the veins bulging out over the network of bones I was gazing at my future when I saw ammas hands. (Shah, 2010, p. 47) Laila further notices the marks on a poor mans body and describes This mans sores were further up to his arms; track marks like a rail road line etched in red all the way up and down his biceps and forearms or rather what little of them were left. (Shah, 2008, p. 17) The residents of the slum have to wait for the doctors who visit the hospital twice a week, irrespective of the requirement of their duty which makes it obligatory on them to be in the hospital around the clock. The patients have to wait for the doctor, to whatever extent they might be suffering, they have no other choice. Those who were extremely unhealthy had to wait for the doctors twice weekly visits. The health workers, however, were able to diagnose and treat the simple illnesses. (Shah, 2010, p. 42) For Laila, a female doctor is an unlikely possibility in capitalist patriarchy. Laila has spent all the years of her life in slums so she is conditioned and socialized into those conditions where the sole purpose of a females life is a husband because husband defines the social status of a woman. He is the ultimate definition of a woman. Thought of a career has not been given a position in her ideology that is why Laila expresses her wonder at seeing a female doctor A woman doctor; I never thought such a thing was possible. (Shah, 2010, p. 43) The poor cannot afford their diseases to be treated because of the lack of money. Owning to insufficient means of earning and the exploitation of the capitalist class their diseases result only in their deaths. When Jumana falls ill, Laila tries to persuade her mother 61

into consulting a doctor at a government hospital but she refuses because even the cheaper, government hospitals are unaffordable for them. It is stated in Slum Child We cant afford this, replied amma They wont cost much at government hospital. Whatever they cost, we cannot afford, Amma answered. (Shah, 2010, p. 44) Whenever Jumana or any of Lailas sisters fall ill, their mother has to go to the capitalist masters who bestow the blessing of few rupees on her to get her kids treated. It is the ultimate responsibility of the mother to take care of the kids and beg for them. She works as a maid in rich houses and fulfills the needs of her husband and her family. She had to beg her employers when one of us was more seriously ill. (Shah, 2010, p. 08) On one hand, Jumana gradually dies because of the improper medical facilities because she does not have enough money to afford her daughters treatment. Her body was a bag of bones Her abnormally thin limbs, the largeness of her head, the strange stray tint of her skin: all pointed to the thread of life in her growing thinner every day. (Shah, 2010, p. 91) On the contrary there are people of the rich class who do not have to worry about few thousand rupees rather they will spend the huge amounts of money for the treatment of minor ailments. Jumanas mother works all day long and cannot manage to buy the medicine. Madams daughter rests at her home, spends her day in luxury, doing nothing and still she is better attended by the doctors. She can afford the costliest medicine and medical treatments. I could hardly believe it that there were people willing to fly on a plane and spend lakhs and lakhs of rupees to get better when they were ill?... Moneys no problem for them. If they need an operation, theyll go abroad for treatment. (Shah, 2010, p. 97) Laila is enraged at the death of her sister because of the insensitivity of the doctors towards her sister because their fees were more important for them than a human life. This is the curse of the capitalist system. I was angry with the doctors who looked at my sister and decided that she was not worth attending. (Shah, 2010, p. 116)

4.2

Ideology as A Tool
62

Ideology as part of the superstructure is generated by an economic base, works to justify the base. Ideologies present in a capitalist society will explain, justify, and support the capitalist mode of production. (Althusser, 1997, p. 34) Class and gender discrimination in capitalist patriarchal societies is a result of ideological practices, perpetuated, propagated and regurgitated through tools of Ideological State Apparatus and Repressive State Apparatus. The White Tiger and Slum Child depict the use of these tools for the maintenance of the status quo.

4.2.1 The White Tiger

A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99 percent as strong, as talented, as intelligent in every way to exist in perpetual servitude; servitude so strong that you can put the key of his emancipation in a mans hand and he will through it back at you with a curse. (Adiga, 2008, p. 176) The White Tiger is a narrative representing the class stratification and struggle betwixt various people, belonging to different ideologies, religions, gender and economic status. It depicts the societal and class structure; simultaneously demonstrating that how ideologies play a crucial role in making and unmaking of peoples lives. The thesis envisages The White Tiger as a portrayal of the issues like class, base and super structure ideology and gender. It is an impressive narration of Balrams rise from the lowest to the highest stratum of class because of alteration of ideology. It is through ideology that the people are enslaved for their whole lives.

4.2.1.1

Family

The basis of whole Indian system and Indian economy is the Rooster Coop. India does not have a secret police or dictatorship because they have the Rooster Coop. It serves all purposes. People come into this trap because of their families. Family is the reason behind the coop. The Indian Family is the reason we are trapped and tied to the Coop. (Adiga, 2008, p. 119) One can escape this coop only after sacrificing his family, children, parents and siblings which demands a man of steel nerves. The person needs to be callous enough not to think about his blood and flesh. 63

Only a man who is prepared to see his family destroyed hunted, beaten and burned alive by the masters can break out of the Coop. that would take no normal human being, but a freak, a pervert of nature. It would, in fact, take a White Tiger. (Adiga, 2008, p. 209) In Family Ideological State Apparatus, people attach a lot of importance to their families. Family becomes the base for any sort of exploitation. The servants serving to land lords can never think of buggering their masters or dodging them because land lords keep the whole record of their family members. They will kill their whole family on account of any mistake of their servants. People of the higher castes are born to rule. They have servants for everything. We have got people to take care of us here our drivers, our watchmen, our masseurs. (Adiga, 2008, p. 117) Family comprises of mother, father and their off spring, sometimes their grand children too. The poor breed more children than they can feed. There resources cannot come up to their needs, which is big reason of being trapped in the vicious circle of poverty. In Balrams family a persons worth is determined by the amount of money he earns. The living human beings are not that important as is the buffalo in the house because she gives milk. She is the fattest and most cared for member of the family. She was the fattest thing in our family; this was true in every house in the village. All day long, the women fed her and fed her fresh grass; feeding her was the main things in their lives. All their hopes were concentrated in her fatness sir. If she gave enough milk, the women would sell some of it and there might be a little more money at the end of the day. (Adiga, 2008, p. 121) When in the novel the drunken wife of Balrams master Ashok kills a child, Balram tells his master not to get worried as people in the darkness do not care for their children that is why they would not get into any big trouble on account of killing the child. You know how these people in the darkness are: they have eight, nine, ten children sometimes they do not know the names of their own children. Her parents if they are here in Delhi if they even know where she is tonight wont go to the police. (Adiga, 2008, p. 143) After reproduction, the most popular recreation of the poor is watching movies. They 64

are attracted by this 3 hours fantasy world which shapes their ideology. The poor are so occupied with the care of their masters that they do not have time even for their families. Their first priority is their masters. As Balram says in the novel My master was taken care of, now it was the time to see my family. (Adiga, 2008, p. 83) Poor families are trapped into the vicious circle of poverty. Balrams father dies and it is after his death that Balram sees his brother Kishan working and living like his father, lean, weak, miserable and being ripped even to the flesh of his bones. He had become all of a sudden my father. (Adiga, 2008, p. 124) Income of a family decides the life standard. If someone earns a good amount of money then he is a man otherwise he will lead a life worse than animals. When Protagonist Balrams father says in the novel that All my life I have been treated like a donkey. All I wanted that at least one son of mine at least one should live like a man. (Adiga, 2008, p. 45) He gets insulted by the people at every stage of his life just because of his weak economic base. When he tries to become a driver, he is insulted that he is not the man to learn driving because the energy and the fire needed for driving is absent from his personality. When he goes to Delhi as a driver to Ashok, he is insulted by other drivers. He wipes and massages his masters feet. When his master Ashoks wife, happens to kill a child on the road, Balram is made to sign a paper to take the responsibility of killing the child on himself. Whereas when Balram gets rich, his driver happens to kill a boy. Balram goes to the parents of the deceased boy and gives them money. History repeats itself but she receives different responses. Servants never take at their masters because they have learnt only obedience, without any ifs and buts. Masters are always sure that their servants would do what they are asked to. My man will do what he is to do, no worries about that. (Adiga, 2008, p. 201) Servants are trained to disrespect other servants because if they realize that they are vulnerable to the same things, same pains and same exploitation, that would be the end of the rich. That is way they are always kept at daggers drawn with one another. Servants need to abuse other servants. Its been bred into us; the way 65

Alsatian dogs are bred to attack strangers. We attack anyone who is familiar. (Adiga, 2008, p. 154) But this ideological apparatus no longer exists in such a callous form. When Balram refuses to spill the beans of his master, the driver tells him that it is weaker. Loyal to the last. They dont make servants like you anymore. (Adiga, 2008, p. 124) Family serves as a Rooster Coop. Human beings serve as Beast of Burden and transport bulky rich men and women to their houses, the luggage in the mansions of the rich. The rich hand them price of this luggage which equals their one, two or three years salary. If they run with that money they can start a little business somewhere and lead a respectable life but they dare not do so. They know they are the next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the Coop. (Adiga, 2008, p. 189) Drivers drive with millions rupees of their masters but they never touch that money. Novel tells that Indians are the worlds most honest people. (Adiga, 2008, p. 123) It is so because they are caught in the Rooster Coop. When Balram is asked to go to the jail for the crime committed by Pinky Madam, he is ready to do so. He does not rebel. He does not dare so because of the Rooster Coop. I was to go to jail for a killing I had not done. I was in terror and yet not once did the thought of running away cross my mind. Not once did the thought, Ill tell judge the truth, cross my mind. I was trapped in the Rooster Coop. We are made mysterious to ourselves by the Rooster Coop we are locked in. (Adiga, 2008, p. 143) By the end of the novel, he is prepared to leave his family and his friends and runs away with the money of his master. He breaks the Coop. Ive made it. Ive broken out of the Coop. (Adiga, 2008, p. ) The servants in the novel jeer at Balram when he tries to alter his life style and follow the ways of his master. He is discouraged. It is so because Servants have to keep other servants from becoming innovators, experimenters or entrepreneurs. That is the sad truth, Mr. Premier. The Coop 66

is guarded from the inside. (Adiga, 2008, p. 145) People who are caught in this coop would be able to free themselves only after breaking this coop which is done by Balram. This enables him to get out of the coop, family, and challenge the exploitation and oppression to get free.

4.2.1.2

Education

The school in dark India is also an illustration of the corruption. We are told If the India village is a paradise, then the school is a paradise within a paradise. (Adiga, 2008, p. 21) Teacher as a trainer sets example for the students with his dishonesty and insensitivity. No wonder that the students happen to be corrupt and immoral. Teacher steals the governments grants for uniform and lunch of the children. Balrlam cannot pursue his studies because his family cannot afford to pay his fee and more over they need more family members to earn. His base is not strong that is why he pursues his education only by listening to other peoples experiences and their conversations at tea stalls where he is working. Instead of wiping out spots of tables and crushing coals for the oven, I used my time at the tea shop in Laxaman Garh to spy on every customer at every table, and over hear everything they said. I decided that was how I would keep my education going forward I have been a big believer in education, especially my own. (Adiga, 2008, p. 52) It is perpetuated into servants that their security is guaranteed only by their blind obedience. This magazine is very popular in all the servants of the city. The murderer in the magazine is so mentally disturbed and sexually deranged that not one reader would like to be him and in the end he always gets caught by some honest, hardworking police officer (ha!), or goes mad and hangs himself by the bed sheet after writing a sentimental letter to his mother or primary school teacher, or is chased, beaten, buggered or garroted by the brother of the women he has done in. (Adiga, 2008, p. 23) Servants ideology is shaped through these magazines that whoever tries to deceive and face his master, he is doomed so their well being is implicit in their honesty and in their loyalty to their masters.

4.2.1.2

Politics
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Elections in the Darkness are a show of corruption, bribery and the wrong political system. They are pre decided; votes and seats are sold and bought. Everything is for sale in darkness from the smallest to the biggest. When in the novel Balrams master Ashok bribes a political leader, Balram wonders how much of their income they are paying to get rid of the income tax. Ashok, the American qualified son of the land lord, who is unfamiliar with Indian ways, gets annoyed. Take money out of banks and bribe people. Is this what I came to India for? (Adiga, 2008, p. 180) This is the thing which enrages Blaram, the Dark Indias son. He ponders over it and comes to know that Mr. Ashok is giving money to all these politicians in Delhi so that they will excuse him from the tax he has to pay. And who owns that tax, in the end? Who, but the ordinary people of this country you. (Adiga, 2008, p. 145) Every time when election approaches, countless promises are made but they are mere moon shine. Change of governments is not the change of ideas rather it is just the change of personalities carrying same ideology and same way of ruling over the poor. The elections show that the poor will not be ignored. The darkness would not be silent. There is no water in the taps and what do you people in Delhi give us? You gave us mobile phone. Can a man drink a phone when he is thirsty? Women walk for miles every morning to find a bucket of clean water (Adiga, 2008, p. 123) India always propagates its democracy. Masses are concerned about politicians actions and public welfare plans than being concerned about democracy or dictatorship. Novel shows a politician saying that their country does not have sewage pipes, drinking water, and Olympic medals. Balram shares his idea of a country If I were making a country, Id get the sewage pipes first, then the democracy, then Id go about giving them pamphlets and statues of Gandhi to other people, (Adiga, 2008, p. 96) When elections come near in Balrams village in Dhan Abad, the city in the Darkness, their votes are sold by the owner of their tea shop even without their permission though they are under 18, the legal age to vote. 68

I had to be eighteen. All of us in the tea shop had to be eighteen, the legal age to vote. There was an election coming up, and the tea shop owner had already sold us. He had sold our finger prints - the inky finger prints which the illiterate person makes on the ballot paper to indicate his vote. I had overheard this from a customer. This was supposed to be a close election; he had got a good price for each one of us from the Great Socialists Party. (A diga, 2008, p. 145) Not only masses but their masters are also corrupt. Masses are a reflection of the leaders. The Great Socialist, villagers leader is corrupt and bribing. The Great Socialist himself is said to have embezzled one billion rupees from the Darkness, and transferred that money into a bank into a small, beautiful country in Europe, full of white people and black money. (Adiga, 2008, p. 110) When Pinky Madam kills the child, Balram is forced to sign a paper stating that Balram has killed the girl and he is to be punished in case girls parents come to claim anything against Ashok or his wife. Balram is to be punished for his masters crime. He informs that many servants suffer the same fate. Jails of Delhi are full of drivers who are there behind bars because they are taking the claim for their good, solid, middle class masters. We have left the villages but masters still own us, body, soul and arse Yesthis is right we live in worlds greatest democracy here. (Adiga, 2008, p. 145) Democracy is declared the root cause of all the evils in the society. Democracy is a chain in the necks of the poor. They are promised good health facilities, food, clothing and shelter but it just remains a hue and cry. People are ripped to the very flesh on their bones. Their votes are bought by democratic leaders, there are more votes than the voters. Fake identity cards are issued. I tell you there is only one thing wrong with this placewe have this fucked up system called parliamentary democracy. Otherwise we would be just like china. (Adiga, 2008, p. 56) This unjust system makes Balram a corrupt and dishonest man who has been a hard 69

working and focused. Once he happens to know the rulers, he starts taking revenge. The selfless and loyalty is bred into them. As he affirms I was growing a belly at last. The more I stole from him, the more I realized how much he has stolen from me. (Adiga, 2008, p. 201) Residents of Darkness have no sense of individuality or privacy. They do not have any idea of independent living, good life standard, nice clothing, better food, healthy thinking and broad vision because they believe that they do not deserve this all. Balram finally succeeds in getting out of this pit of slavery because he discovered the way to freedom. Even as a boy I could see what was beautiful in the world; I was not destined to stay a salve. (Adiga, 2008, p. 204) The more the Balrams master gets corrupt, the braver Balram gets. He learns the ways of his master, starts brushing his teeth, stops scratching his groin, wears dresses like him, and tries to live like him. When his master spends a night with a golden haired girl Balram loses his hard earned money in the search of beautiful golden haired lass but the girls hair turned out to be fake, a dye job. He gets utterly disappointed. I sighed because this one looked nothing like Kim Basinger. Not half that pretty. That was when it hit me, in the way it never had before how the rich always get the best things in life, and all that we get is their leftovers. (Adiga, 2008, p. 121) In the Darkness people do not even have the choice of being good. The false hood and buggery is bred into them. But in the light, one can be good, if one wishes so. It is not as if you come to Banglore, you find everyone is moral and upright here. This city has its share of thugs and politicians. Its just that here, if a man wants to be good, he can be good. In Laxman Garh, he does not have even this choice. That is the difference between this India and that India: choice. (Adiga, 2008, p. 118) This class antagonism provides base for the revolution resulting in the abolishment of all classes, providing people a unanimous life style, clothing, shelter, food, and education. Vijay, in the novel, belongs to Pig herds family, the lowest caste, but becomes respectable in his village Laxman Garh when he gets a job as bus conductor and wears the uniform. A uniform, the symbol of RSA, is the most respected thing in that village. With the 70

passage of time, when Vijay gets into politics and establishes himself in a political party as an efficient leader, his respect increases. He has quit his old job and joined politics now. That was the thing about Vijay, each time when u saw him, he has done better for himself. He was a born politician. (Adiga, 2008, p. 112) It is in the end when he reaches to the cabinet, that even the land lords son opens the door of car for him. His base becomes stronger so does his position in the eyes of the people, because only power matters for them. A land lord bowing before a pig herds sonthe marvels of democracy. (Adiga, 2008, p. 95) Servants are given low ideals in order to prevent them from dreaming high. The highest ideal of Protagonist Balram is Vijay, the bus conductor, who wears a uniform and has a whistle in his hands. I wanted to be like Vijay with a uniform, a pay check, a shiny whistle with a piercing sound, and people looking at me with eye that said how important he looks. (Adiga, 2008, p. 107) It is only after the realization of exploitation that Balram is able to aspire higher and idealize something more than a driver or bus conductor. Police, armed forces, rangers and other people of this sort also serve as a tool for the perpetuation of particular ideologies; they are called the tools of Repressive State Apparatus. In the novel, there are many examples of Repressive State Apparatus. When Balram leaves Delhi with Ashoks money, he expects police to chase him. He tells about the role police play in helping the rich rulers to maintain their hegemony. A bus load of men in khaki it was a sensational case must have gone to Laxamn Garh when investigating my disappearance. They would have questioned the shop keepers, bullied the rickshaw pullers, and woken up the school teacher. Did he steel as a child? Did he sleep with whores? They would have smashed up a grocery shop or two, or forced out confessions from one or two people. (Adiga, 2008, p. 202) Ideology of the ruling class is perpetuated as the ruling ideology. State is very conscious about controlling its masses and their ideology. A man is a production of his 71

ideology, so state control thinking and ideology of the people in order to control them even state keeps an eye on the actions of the people. You know those Bronze statues of Nehru and Gandhi are everywhere. The police have put cameras inside their eyes to watch for the cars, to see everything they do. (Adiga, 2008, p. 132)

4.2.1.3

Religion

Another kind of Ideological State Apparatus is religious ISA. There are religious divides among people. Hindus consider Muslims inferior same do the Muslims. In the novel when the grandson of the land lord Stork plays cricket and on hitting a six, he exclaims happily that he is Azharrudin, the Muslim Indian cricketer. He is scolded by Stork that he should not call himself Azharrudin as he is a Muslim rather he must call himself Gawaskar. These biases are bred into their offspring. Stork younger son remains the center of criticism because he marries a girl of another religion. She is a Christian? Did you know? No way. Yes. And he married her? They married in America. When we Indians go there we lose all respect for caste. (Adiga, 2008, p. 67) Their gods are also the tool for the propagation of particular ideologies. The most favorite and the most worshipped God in the Darkness is Hanuman, a servant to God Rama, a faithful and honest servant. People worship him because of his blind faithfulness and utter obedience to his master. It depicts their belief that the honesty, fidelity and faithfulness to ones masters are the biggest virtues over earth which can make one godly. An image of saffron color creature, half man, half monkey: this is Hanuman, everyones favorite God in the Darkness. Do you know about Hanuman? He was the faithful servant of God Rama, and we worship him in our temples because he is a shining example of how to serve your masters with absolute fidelity, love and devotion. (Adiga, 2008, p. 89) When Balram is a second driver in the Storks house, Storks first driver, who is a Muslim, but pretends to be a Hindu just to get the job as Stork does not like the Muslims. 72

Their economic needs decide their religion, moral, social and ethical values. What a miserable life, he has had, having to hide his religion, his name just to get a job as a driver and he is a good driver, no question of it, a far better one than I will never be. Part of me wanted to get up and apologize to him right there and say, you go and be a driver in Delhi. You never did anything to hurt me. Forgive me brother. (Adiga, 2008, p. 109) Peoples ideologies, their religion, values, ethics and education serve for the maintenance of the status quo, to support the capitalist system of society. None of their actions is autonomous rather they are perpetuated and bred into them as a work of certain agendas.

4.2.2 Slum Child

Slum Child reflects the formation of ways of thought and life by the ruling class. It presents them not as an autonomous process but transferred to people through conditioning and socialization with the use of the tools of ideology like family, religion, education. This happens with Laila, More than any faith, our poverty was our religion. We worshipped the feet of the same god - money our rituals were the same to go to the neighborhood of the rich and slave at their temples for eight or nine hours a day and carry home the meager blessings that they bestowed upon us. (Shah, 2010, p. 95) She states that all the peoples action result from their needs; money can fulfill their materials needs so that is the primary determinant of their ideology. A thousand rupees could buy any amount or comfort or security: food and water for days, electricity for weeks, clothes for a whole year. It seemed to me that every day of our life cost money, just to stay alive and you could spend it over a period of time or you could spend it all in a single moment. (Shah, 2010, p. 89) There is vast gap between the idea of a good income of a rich man and a poor man. Though the poor work for long hours for the rich and the rich lead their luxurious life owing to the surplus profits handed over to them by the poor workers. Good, costly education is inaccessible to them because being trapped in the vicious circle of poverty, so the only professions for them are the lower ones. 73

Three thousand rupees was a sum that anyone would be pleased to bring homeThe more grownups among us began to work boys as mechanics apprentices or tea boys, and girls at home learning to perform the menial chores before getting married. The fortunate went to school up until the age of twelve or thirteen. The doomed became beggar or worse. (Shah, 2010, p. 45) The ideologies are not absolute but a propagation of capitalist patriarchal agendas. They are vulnerable to alteration owing to change of needs. She was telling me that everything that I ever believed was wrong, an error. A corruption. (Shah, 2010, p. 78)

4.2.2.1

Family

Lailas mother works as a maid for a rich family in Defense, from nine in the morning to six in the evening to bring three thousand rupees a month to her home to feed her kids and a drunkard husband. It is the responsibility of a woman to take care of the rich masters and afterwards the family. Her husband is stronger and more powerful because he has the privilege of being a man in a patriarchal society, though he does not earn. He is deemed stronger owing to the capitalist patriarchal construction of their society. Laila confesses in Slum Child We never quite lost the sense of guilt that we had forced amman to work ten hours a day. (Shah, 2010, p. ) Lailas mother remarries after her divorce because her first husband could not bear only womens presence in the house. Lailas mother was divorced because of her inability to give birth to boys. Girls are an un-asked for burden in patriarchal societies. My father had left us after my brothers death because he couldnt bear to see the woman and the girls still loving when his only son had been put under ground in front of his eyes. (Shah, 2010, p. 34) Her mother earns for them but still she needs a man for her security because a man is the definition of a woman in capitalist patriarchies. She has to give birth to kids, rear them, condition them, and take care of the home, family and of the rich masters at the same time. My mother had remarried and she was pregnant again. (Shah, 2010, p. 34) She gives birth to three boys in three years despite her poor health, bad living conditions and malnutrition but her husband is happy because of the boys. They have already 74

taken up the role of grown up men by bullying, harassing and disrespecting their sisters and whiling away all of their time in wandering about and creating troubles for them. My three younger brothers came after the other like puppies. Now our house was filled with not one, but four men (Shah, 2010, p. 45) Laila and Jumana never lose the sense of guilt for being a burden on the shoulders of their mother. It is a curse to bear girls in patriarchal societies because men are the ones who are going to grow up and earn to support the family. Girls are to be married and given dowry which needs a lot of money. Honor is a critical issue because parents can be black mailed through their daughters. Amma saw us as burdens, as obligations that had been landed upon her from an age when she had been too young to make a choice whether she wanted us in her life or not. (Shah, 2010, p. 67) Girls are not secure into their obedient and docile positions too because their importance in their in-laws is determined by their capacity to draw huge monetary aids from their parents and the dowry which they bring. Whoever fails to come up to the dowry expectations is vulnerable to violence and harassment. Young womens clothes caught fire while cooking. A carelessly tossed dupatta or an extra long sleeve could easily generate a massive blaze. (Shah, 2010, p. 78) Laila narrates an incident in Slum Child where the in-laws conspire to burn a girl who is cooking in the kitchen to get rid of her. Woman never gets the feeling of having her place in society. She has no room of her own. If she gets one, then she has to share it with the man who can throw her out of it whenever he wants. The girls mother-in-law and sister-in-law had conspired to catch hold of her while an uncle had pushed her arm near the flame. Then they all had watched her scream and writhe in agony as she had burned in front of their eyes. (Shah, 2010, p. 90) Family is the social institution which serves the capitalist patriarchy. Motherhood is a responsibility taken up by the woman after her marriage. She socializes and conditions the kids into obedience to turn them into blind servants of capitalism and to adopt their ascribed

75

gender roles. It automatically becomes the responsibility of Jumana to take care of younger brothers and her step father when Lailas mother is absent from home,. Jamana has stepped into the role of surrogate motherhood. (Shah, 2010, p. 74) Motherhood and domestic responsibility of cooking, cleaning and minding the domesticity is the ultimate destiny of a woman in a patriarchal society. moments stolen between hours spent in cleaning, mending and minding children. (Shah, 2010, p. 97) When Jumana falls ill and her mother goes to Madam Ansaris house to beg for money, she persuades Laila to go with her to arouse the sympathies of Madam. She convinces Laila by telling her that if she will have her daughter with her, people will know that she is very poor, deprived and doomed and is to be pitied. If they see you with me, theyll realize that I have a daughter and Im telling the truth. They dont trust us you know. (Shah, 2010, p. 112) Laila rides on bus for an hour to go to Madams house in Defense where many cars are present in the garage. During this strenuous ride, she had to bear the physical harassment from the men who take every woman for granted, as a piece for amusement. Their belief that men should have a priority on our all modes of transport, as they were going to earn where as women out of their home were only up to mischief. (Shah, 2010, p. 72) By the end of it, when she reaches in Defense where Madam Ansari resides, she gapes at the beauty and serenity of the place which amplifies the inferiority complex in her because she has never been to such a place before. She had no notion that people could be as rich as is Madam. Everything looked so serene that tears sprang to my eyes. I had never known that people lived in places as calm and well ordered as this. (Shah, 2010, p. 117) Their mother is also engaged in her other routines in such a way that she hardly gets any time to teach her children decent ways of living in the world. Whatever she learns is from the slums and by wandering about in Issa colony.

76

We hardly needed any looking after in the conventional sense, beyond the basics, being fed and clothed and made to sleep under a roof at night rest of it was up to us. We were responsible for taking ourselves to school or not. We could wander anywhere we pleased. (Shah, 2010, p. 54) Jumana saves money for her wedding instead of getting medical treatment because of her socialization because she learns that marriage is the ultimate completion of a girl. She dreams of getting married and serving a man alongwith his whole family for the rest of her life and getting abused by him. I saved it. I was keeping it for when I got married. (Shah, 2010, p. 66) Laila, also dreams of a house and children as her ultimate fulfillment as a woman. a house, a family, the sun in a dirt brown sky. (Shah, 2010, p. 86) When they go on a picnic, Laila dreams of coming on beach with her man someday. She was very young at that time. But still she has learnt through social conditions around her that she has to seek the security from the manly presence of someone with her. I thought of being able to go on a date myself one day with a handsome boy who could take me for a meal and hold my hand. (Shah, 2010, p. 92) When Jumana dies, Laila takes up the responsibility of taking care of not only the children and mother. Laila holds her mothers hand and leads her to the home. She put her hand in mine as if I were the mother and she was the child. Something told me that it was going to be like this from now on. (Shah, 2010, p. 124) Amma teaches Laila and Jumana the blind obedience to the social customs and patriarchal conditions. Laila never thinks of taking up a career and being independent. She is trained into domestic chores and obedience through conditioning. Her mother uses thrashing, beating, scolding and whatever it takes to train and socialize her. This happens many times in the novel. The resounding slap form ammas hands, as sharp and hard as a ruler, cracked against my cheek. (Shah, 2010, p. 118) Ammas hand snaked out and slapped me hard on my cheek. (Shah, 2010, p. 89)

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4.2.2.2

Education

Educational ISA also serves as a tool for the perpetuation of ideologies. Lailas school teacher tells her about religion and the social systems which shatters Lailas ideologies. Her knowledge marks the distinction between aapa and the ignorant slum dwellers. She comes for condolence on Jumanas death when Laila feels that she is an alien who does not belong to her world. It was easy to see that aapa was not one of us. (Shah, 2010, p. 83) School trains her into her role as a girl. School teacher aapa conditions her unconsciously from her early years. Aapa asks her to clean the slates and do other chores for her at school. These are to become the house hold responsibilities for her in the coming years of life. aapa had asked me to stay late and clean the slates. (Shah, 2010, p. 34) Laila does not like to go to school as no one tells her the importance of knowing about the world and the ways of the world. She wants to explore the world. School is stupid. Id rather be out and see the world. (Shah, 2010, p. 98) Gradually with the passage of time, Laila gets trapped into the trials of life that she finds no room to get to know the world. Being a girl, she feels insecure in the world which leaves her no choice but to go with the flow of the things destined for her. I put aapa and school at the back of my mind where they belonged. (Shah, 2010, p.84 ) Laila did not take any interest in whatever was going around her in the class room because she was not interested in getting formal education. She was more interested in knowing the world. It seemed that they were too dull and small brained to know anything. (Shah, 2010, p. 42) Aapa took less interest in teaching the poor slum children and paid more attention to the well dressed, well mannered rich people. I didnt pay much of the attention to what aapa said, I preferred to stare out of the window and day dream. (Shah, 2010, p. 43)

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Laila contrasts madam and her mothers way of treating her. Her mother never hesitates in slapping, scolding, or pulling her hair when Laila disobeys her. She conditions her through incongruous means like beating and scolding. She would always find my cheeks with unerring accuracy, and if I angered her enough, she would remove a shoe and throw at my head. (Shah, 2010, p. 67) She wonders if her mother had used the same techniques, had she been rich. Most of the bitterness and cruelty springs from the poverty, depravity and insufficiency of resources to fulfill the needs of their lives. If she had been rich and educated like her madam, she would have found more sophisticated ways to tell us, teach us, and guide us. (Shah, 2010, p. 110) Education and family work with each other to condition and socialize children into their ascribed social roles.

4.2.2.3

Politics

Political institution is controlled by the ruling elite and the capitalist industrialist of the country. Politics is the primary tool to determine the use of other ideological and repressive apparatuses for the maintenance of capitalism and patriarchy where women are not given their rights, job opportunities and laws. Government uses the Repressive State Apparatus to control the masses. I thought the government was the in-charge of it, so of course there would be soldiers everywhere, telling everyone where to go, what to do. (Shah, 2010, p. 119) Possession of the means of production and resources for the production of money are controlled by the political leaders as Laila tells in Slum Child that ministers and prime ministers come to dine at Madam Ansaris house. They serve and strength the capitalist patriarchal system with their collaborative efforts. Madams house made me feel as small and insignificant as a cockroach. (Shah, 2010, p. 73)

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Religious and political leaders are at daggers drawn with each other. But they fulfill each others needs. Political leaders provide money to the religious leaders. Religious leaders do not speak against political leaders because of their monetary needs. They were like two blood sucking parasites that needed one another equally; the one to rage against and the other to bear the rage. Without each other, neither would have felt half the energy or motivation to carry on that they felt when competing with each other for cash and custom. (Shah, 2010, p. 54) Religion attracts people towards their salvation for the wrong doings and sins while political leaders drag people into the evils and the wrong doings. Together, they make an opposite but like the opposite poles of a magnet, they simultaneously attract each other and strengthen the system. an eternal battle, between one who was devoted to bringing souls to their salvation and the other to their destruction. The tow of them made a comedic pair. (Shah, 2010, p. 75) Professions are divided among the people regarding their status, qualification and gender. Many professions are caste specific and many are gender specific. The poor always get the lower ranked and less paid jobs. Women too get the less paid, or manual jobs. This discrimination is crucial for the uprising of women and the poor working class. They were going to their jobs downtown where they worked as office peons, doing not a lot more than fetching tea, cleaning up the offices and sorting the mail. Some were waiters at restaurants who brought the leftover food to their home. (Shah, 2010, p. 56) Laila is unable to develop a comprehensive picture of the world around her because of her inability to communicate with the people. She is girl who cannot trust the dominant group in societal system. She is vulnerable to sexual assaults and physical and mental violence which renders her weak towards the atrocities of the world. The world was to me a concept that would have made no sense whatsoever when examined closely, one jigsaw puzzle at a time. (Shah, 2010, p. 115) Power, by hook or by crook, is the only thing that matters in the capitalist patriarchal societal construction. Criminals are respected out of fear of the power that they possess. This fear is used as a repressive tool to repress the people. 80

His son has become a minor criminal and was treated like a celebrity. (Shah, 2010, p. 114)

4.2.2.4

Religion

Religion is the excuse of the poor. It is a consolation for the people suffering from poverty and diseases. They hope to get the reward and compensation for their suffering in the life hereafter. We were the blessed because we were the meek and poor and we would have our reward eventually. (Shah, 2010, p. 130) Religion is nothing more than a tool for people that they use for their benefit. Religion and God are used to make people sinful, erroneous, cruel, guilty and responsible for wrong doings so that they cannot raise their heads high because of their false sense of guilt and sin. It was easy for people to bring up God when they wanted you to feel ashamed of yourself, when they wanted acquiescence or obedience. (Shah, 2010, p. 109) Religion is used to give vent to the insecurity, prejudice and biases towards others. Lailas colony is burnt by the Moslems who are blinded by their own upright beliefs. They consider the Christians infidels. The implicit intention of this burning and blaspheming is to grab the money and property of the weak. Nobody was going to accuse anyone here of burning Quran or blaspheming against the Prophet accusations concocted for grabbing someones property or land rather than defending anothers faith. (Shah, 2010, p. 112) This ideology is used by the capitalist class to keep the people in perpetual servitude. The women are more prone to religious practices than the men because they are weaker than them. I had begun to have serious doubts about the blessings that God chose to send us. (Shah, 2010, p. 113) People do not get respect, food, and good clothes in their lives. But they are buried in new good clothes in well adorned graveyards. A gora Kabristan - Gods blessing to Jumana in her death that He could not give her life. (Shah, 2010, p. 43) 81

Laila holds her grudges against God for the prejudices and discrimination which is observed in His treatment towards his creatures. Jumana dies and Lailas belief in God and his mercy shatters. She is told that Jumanas death was willed by God. It was the will of Allah. (Shah, 2010, p. 78) But she questions the mercy and kindness of God who inflicted so much pain on her sister and let her die. If God can allow someone so good to go through something like that, then I dont want any part of Him. (Shah, 2010, p. 79) Jumana has been seriously ill. Her mother begs for money from her masters. Doctors refuse to treat her. They went to pir to ask for some magic or talisman that might heal her. Madam Ansari gives few thousand rupees as an advance payment for Jumanas treatment though the money is insufficient for the treatment but they have no other option than to rejoice at the meager blessings of God which are generously bestowed upon the poor. The coins were talisman that might bestow some kind of magical healing on Jumanas ravaged body. (Shah, 2010, p. 67) The religious leaders come to offer the customary rituals after her death and bury Jumana. Laila is perturbed to see this and questions the sincerity of the rituals and ideas which are not offered to her in her life but are extended after her death. Why isnt she as a hospital then? Why didnt you arrange it? (Shah, 2010, p. 79) Human has always been making sacrifices to please the gods. In primitive times, the sacrifices were of human beings, now they slaughter animals and their precious things to please their gods. But the corruption of the religious institution is no secret. Before they killed animals, they killed human beings as sacrifices. (Shah, 2010, p. 34) Thus, the ruling powerful class achieves its ends by making the powerless poor blind to the hideous truth of the prevalent societal structures. Consciousness Raising is the most important tool to analyze and study the Marxist feminist tendencies. Gender and class discrimination is a result of ideological social practices and False Consciousness. Simultaneously it is necessary to disabuse people of their false

82

consciousness in order to bring a revolution in society and to transform and turn the prevalent system on its head.

4.3

Protagonists Comparison
Balrams character has an upward movement where he journeys from rags to riches.

He is the hero of The White Tiger, the male protagonist of a novel written by a male author Aravind Adiga. Female characters are rare in The White Tiger, wherever they appear that is just in the typical traditional roles of wife, mother and prostitute. Social privileges extended towards men in patriarchal societies and the conditioning and socialization of men play a vital role in the plot of the narrative. He is able rise from the lowest societal stratum to the highest social ladder because he is highly ambitious. He is even called a psychopath because he does not care for family, religion, morals or defined pattern of society. He recognizes the Ideological State Apparatus that is used to chain and enslave the poor. He refuses to become a victim of Ideological State Apparatus, this decision ensures his freedom. Laila is the protagonist of the Slum Child. She is the female protagonist of a novel by a female writer Bina Shah. Men play the role of the exploiter as well as emancipator for Laila. All troubles of Laila arise because of not having a good man in her life. By the end of the novel, her troubles come to an end because of her master, a good man. She gets engaged and her final consolation comes in the form of marriage. She suffers because of being a girl in a patriarchal society where she has to be careful about the inhibitions and limitations set for a female. She does not set or pursue higher goals because she is socialized and conditioned into being timid, meek and naive. She and her mother, both look for a husband to lessen the problems in their lives. Even a good-fornothing husband is a solace for her mother as he guarantees her security and protection in a capitalist patriarchy. Balram does not even get a name from his family because people in Darkness are too indulged in the sole pursuit of earning three meals for a day that they have got no time to name their numerous children. These children are produced by breeding machines; women. They give birth to kids year by year amid poverty, bad health conditions and malnutrition where they have to work hard to make both ends meet along with providing them recreation which burdens them even more in the form of children. 83

Daughters are considered a burden because people use them as a tool to oppress and exploit their parents. In The White Tiger, Balram leaves his school because he has to work and earn to meet the expenses of the marriage of his cousin, to manage her dowry and the wedding money for the bridegroom. When Balrams brother, Kishan, gets married then Balram feels happy as they were the ones to receive money and dowry from the girls parents this time. We screwed the girls family hard. (Adiga, 2008, p. 154) Females are presented as prostitutes and enchantresses. Balram spends all of his money on a whore to copy the ways of his master. Ashok gets a golden haired girl who looked like Kim Basinger to sleep with. Balram, later on, laments. This one looked nothing like Kim Basinger. (Adiga, 2008, p. 121) Balram works on the tea shops without any fear of sexual harassment or the ogling eyes of the customers. He pursues his informal education at tea stalls, in the streets or wherever he went. He listens to the conversation of the people to develop a deep understanding of the worldly affairs and whatever is going around him in society. This knowledge helps him in his journey towards becoming a member of the affluent class. When Ashoks girl friend asks him to replace his driver, Balram is annoyed. He looks expectantly towards his master but Ashok does not reject her suggestion. This instigates Balram to kill his master cold bloodedly. He knows Ashoks all secrets, from heart to body but he does not care for him. He has served Ashok whole heartedly but in vain. So he plans to get rid of Ashok before Ashok rids of him. I wanted to confront him, eye to eye, man to man. But he wouldnt look at me. Didnt dare face me. I tell you, you could have heard the jigging of my teeth just then. I thought I was making plans for him? Hed been making plans for me. Rich are always one step ahead of us. Arent they? Well not his time. For every step, he would take, Id take two. (Adiga, 2008, p. 119) Laila was unable to pursue her education. She leaves her school as she is more interested in knowing the world. As she grows older, she forgets the ideas about the world because she finds herself trapped as a woman in a capitalist patriarchy. She cannot wander

84

about in the world to explore it and cope with it. She does not talk about education after the mid of the novel. Laila cannot peep out of her home safely. She is even insecure in her own house where a friend of her father attempts to molest her. She gets out to play with her peers but the boys in the street pass comments on her, laugh at her and poke fun at her. She cannot walk in the street confidently because she is well aware of the grim prospects even before stepping out of her home. On the other hand, Maryam, her masters daughter goes out of home but with a driver. Her mother does not trust the driver and sends Laila with her as two women might equal a man. Laila travels to go to Madams house in a bus and feels the insecurity of being a woman. I tugged on ammas arm to whisper in her ear that Somebodys touching me. Stay close to me said amma and managed by some contortion to change places with me. I knew that the mysterious molester must have switched his intentions to her and his hands would crawl all the way up and down his body. (Shah, 2010, p. 73) Balram drives his car on the roads in Delhi in the darkest hours of the night and observes that the girls doing jobs in multinational companies cannot go to their homes in cabs. Their employers hire the services of taxis and sign agreements with them to ensure the safety of the female employees. Even the well educated, well earning women are dependent on men to get securely escorted to their homes. Laila wears the hand-me-down of the hand-me-downs of her masters. Laila wears the dresses and wonders that how she looks in the clothes. Balram too thinks the same when he buys a prostitute like Ashok. Ashoks girl was golden haired and Balram wanted to sleep with some golden haired woman to feel equal to Ashok but by the end, he happens to know that his girls hair were not golden but just a dye job. I struck me how we got the leftovers of the rich. (Adiga, 2008, p. 121) The job of the driver is always taken up by a man as Balram is hired as a driver. Had he not been a driver, he would not have been able to escape from the clutches of poverty. He learns so many things about the world because he is a man. He succeeds in getting out of the Rooster Coop because of being a man. Laila never thinks of doing so, Maryam blames her of speaking to man in the darkness of night which has wrong implications. Laila strives to clear 85

her position in the eyes of her madam. While in The White Tiger, Balram sleeps with whores, he dreams of dipping his beak into his madam, Pinky. He is tempted by Pinkys dresses and her attires deep cuts and never regrets this but Laila is never tempted by her master or masters son rather she is always afraid of them. I felt the stares of men more keenly these da ys. I never ventured far enough to provoke the intentions of the strange men - but the stares never ended. (Shah, 2010, p. 56) Mens sexuality is more vibrant and alive than that of women, this is apparent in the protagonists characters. Laila is always afraid of men. She does not peep out of her world. When she travels in the buses, she is frightened of men who try to harass her by touching her. She seeks some security which she does not get in patriarchal societies like hers. The urchins looked at gawped at me with open mouths, and then they began to giggle and laugh at me a third spat at my feet and then they turned and walked away from me, pulling their kites like devils tails behind them. (Shah, 2010, p. 73) Laila looks for a man to get married. She dreams of a house, kids and a man because man is the ultimate definition of woman in a capitalist patriarchy. Lailas mother remarries after her divorce from her first husband though she was economically independent. She bears domestic violence and feeds four more mouths because she needs a man for security in the society. Lailas sister Jumana was dying but instead of spending money on her treatment, she saves the money for her marriage to meet the expenses of dowry and marriage ceremony. On the contrary, Balram never talks about marriage because he does not need a wife to add to his social position. His mother asks him to come back to marry his cousin but he refuses because marriage, wife and family are the traps to hinder the progress of a man. Had he married, he would have to stay at home, take care of family and think hundred times before killing his master. Marriage is the ultimate choice for a woman but only an option for man. Laila is harassed and assaulted by her step fathers friend Salim. Her father conspires to sell her into prostitution to get money to fulfill the needs of his boys but Laila hears their conversation and runs away to her madams house. Balram never faces anything of this kind rather he is the one to go and buy prostitutes. 86

What did Salim want me to do: To let him touch me and paw me as if I were an animal. I knew from experience of slum that men liked to touch girls - even their blood relations. (Shah, 2010, p. 156) She is vulnerable to sexual assaults and violence from men. She does not venture into anything because of this though this never happens with Balram. He is free to explore the city and the world and this knowledge of the world ultimately renders her successful in the world. Lailas inferior gender position is a complete opposite to that of Balram. Balram succeeds because of the social privileges bestowed upon him. Balrams concept of success is very different from that of Laila. Balram kills his master and rises above the rest using all ways. This idea never occurs to Laila, she does not think of rising above the rest. Laila ends at the same place after a circular movement. She starts with her mother working as a maid and striving to feed her family members. Her sister dies and mother loses her mental balance, making things worse for her. By the end, her mother regains her lost mental balance. Laila works as a maid and is engaged to a man. This is the happy ending of Slum Child. Balram starts as a tea boy at a tea stall and ends as an owner of the The White Tiger Drivers, a taxi cab service. He rises upwards on the societal ladder because of the privileged chances open to him in capitalist societies. This comparative exploration of the characters of the protagonists vividly depicts the capitalist patriarchal construction of society which serves to maintain the status quo to privilege capitalist men and confine women to an under privileged and deprived societal status.

4.4

An Analysis of the Above Discussion

The study of the The White Tiger and Slum Child shows that the conditions for the

poor working class are the same in all capitalist societies. The clutches of capitalism are stronger for the poor working women in capitalist patriarchy. Women suffer a lot more than men because they are more vulnerable to physical, mental, sexual, and domestic violence and harassment which ensures the dominance of the men in societal structure and serves to maintain it. Balram is able to move out of the class oppression in The White Tiger because he is not exposed to those conditions which victimize Laila in Slum Child. Being a man, he does 87

not have any fear of physical, sexual, domestic and gender oppression. He pays the highest of prices for his freedom, with a brutal courage, because he does not care for his family who might have been slew by the capitalist masters. By rising above the ideological shackles, he breaks his chains of slavery into class stratification but it would have been tougher for a girl. Laila is satisfied with her living condition, her sister dies and mother goes insane. But she is totally happy with life when her mother recovers and things get normal for her slum life. Men are capable of making a hell or heaven of a womans life. Balram has never felt the way Laila feels while stepping out of her home. The insecurity and vulnerability is an unwanted privilege bestowed only upon women. Men are a victim of capitalist oppression but they get an out let for their depression as they practice their power on women. On the other hand, women are the ones who have to suffer the capitalist and gender oppression. Capitalist oppression is more gruesome for them as they do not possess the means of production and depend on men for their needs. In capitalist patriarchies, men are more powerful because they are socialized into being so and women are meek, weak and timid. Men are stronger as they are the bread earners for their families. Women, who work as maids, in the rich houses are more vulnerable to the oppression and abuse of men because they are physically and economically weak and are kept so.

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CONCLUSION
Bina Shahs Slum Child and Aravind Adigas The White Tiger depict the inherently intertwined class and gender politics in capitalist patriarchal societal structures. Synthesis of Marxism and Feminism explores the existence and exposes the maintenance of anonymous, marginal and oppressed existence of female belonging to the working class. The comparative study of both of the above mentioned novels establishes the phenomenon of class discrimination which needs the gender discrimination for its perpetuation, maintenance and regurgitation to secure the stronger and safer social status allocated to the male and the weaker and subservient societal position to the female. Feminism marks the male power as omni-potent as well as non-existent. Females lesser capacity for violence against men and her lesser capacity for physical labor renders her inferior to men and confines her to a subordinate position. This phenomenon is consciously perpetuated through conditioning and socialization which takes place through superstructure. Thus female becomes a caste, a stratum, a cultural group and a division whose emancipation becomes a part of the whole super structure of the society. Women are physically oppressed; they are psychologically, economically, politically, and socially exploited in capitalist patriarchal societies. These well structured and preplanned societal hierarchies objectify, thingify, and marginalize females, ultimately making them subservient to males to determine their identity and social status. The capitalist and patriarchal fabric of a societal structure makes it hard for its members to overcome the male chauvinism and challenge the status quo by raising a voice against the oppressive forces to demand a transformation in the society. Advocates of female interests are not always class conscious rather they tend to exploit the class based argument for their own advantage, to support the ruling forces of society. Education can emancipate the working class and oppressed gender from their exploited status and oppressed positions as Balram states in The White Tiger I think, I might sell everything, take the money and start a school an English language school for poor children in Banglore. A school where you wont be allowed to corrupt anyones head with prayers and stories about God or Gandhi nothing but he facts of life for these kids. A school of White Tigers, un leashed on Banglore. (Adiga, 2008, p. 196) 89

Balram suggests in The White Tiger that people need to see the beauty in life around them in order to break their chains. He narrates Even at the age of nine, I was able to see what was beautiful in the world. I was not destined to be a slave. (Adiga, 2008, p. 165) The same notion is presented by Laila in Slum Child when she states I had seen a world that was more beautiful than anything. (Shah, 2010, p. 176) She takes a step towards emancipation from the vicious clutches of poverty and violence by taking a step towards knowing the beauty of the things around her. Her mother has accepted her fate; she could not see what was beautiful around her. She could not evaluate the difference between the beauty of the rich and the poor and therefore could not challenge it. Laila tells in Slum Child Amma working in a beauty salon it was inconceivable that amma belonged here. (Shah, 2010, p. 178) The most beautiful thing around them is Freedom but most of the residents of slums are unable to see the beauty of it because they have accepted the life of slavery as their ultimate fate. They do not recognize the value of beauty around them. Laila longs for this freedom in Slum Child Oh the freedom, the absolute freedom, the freedom of being a part of something wild and primitive. (Shah, 2010, p. 206) Balram also looks for the same ideal freedom Ill say it was all worthwhile to know, just for a day, just for an hour, just for a minute, what it means not to be a servant. (Adiga, 2008, p. 208) Females should be disabused of the false conditioning and socialization in order to get rid of this and acquire an equal position to that of men. Lailas status is more fragile as she cannot take even her own life decisions because of being a girl in a capitalist society who has lesser chances of grasping economic, professional and domestic opportunities to move ahead. Laila suffers from all of these problems as her knowledge is fake, the things she hears are uncertain, her life in slum is random and even her mere existence is open to many

90

challenges as her fathers friend tries to rape her, her father tries to sell her into prostitution, her mistress tries to exploit her by bringing up the issue of her easy sexual access. Laila cannot work at nights; she cannot leave the four walls of the house after the dark. These are the things which Balram never suffers because of being a man in a capitalist patriarchal society. Laila could not leave her family. She returns to her home only to see her dying mother where her father conspires to sell her. Balram does not care for these things. Laila could not pursue her education because of the bleak life prospects for a girl ahead but Balram furthers his education which eventually helps him to break the shackles of class. Consciousness Raising and education are the main emancipatory tools which could serve to emancipate working class and particularly females to get away from the typical class and gender divides to bring them on an equal level where they could work and walk together to smooth the working of societal structures and transform the exploitative relations of production and gender relations through a revolution which could turn this oppressive system on its head, to give way to a more equal, freer, individual and better societal structure which would be free of tags like classes and gender discrimination. Societies will be non-sexist and communist where abuses like capitalism and patriarchy will be non- existent.

91

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Holborn, M. (2012, October 01). Feminism and the Family: An Introduction. Retrieved December 08, 2012 from http://www.earlhamsociologypages.co.uk/Feminism%20and%20the%20Family.htm Holborn, M. (2012, October 10). Marxism and the Family. Retrieved December 08, 2012 from http://www.earlhamsociologypages.co.uk/marxismfamily.html Imtiaz, H. (2011, April 20,). Fiction: A View of the Slums. The Dawn. Retrieved November 27, 2012 from http://dawn.com/2011/03/20/a-view-of-the-slums/ Joseph, J. (2012, January 24,). Bina Shahs Slum Child is a Compelling Story. Ibnlive. Retrieved December 01, 2012 from http://ibnlive.in.com/news/bina-shahs-slum-child-is-a-compellingstory/223882-40-101.html Kapor, A. (2008). The White Tiger: A Review. New York Times Book Review. Retrieved November 9, 2010 from http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/india/adigaa.html Karishna, N. (2008). Getting and Spending. New Statesman. Retrieved March 27, 2010 from http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2008/03/india-adiga-white-china King, E. (2009). Aravind Adiga's Collection of Linked Stories. The Telegraph. Retrieved July 5, 2010 from: Kreptonian, A. (2009, June). A Critique of Marxist Feminism. Studymode. Retrieved December 08, 2012 from http://www.studymode.com/essays/A-Critique-Of-Marxist-Feminism211262.html Kuhn, A.K. (2009). Christa Wolfs Utopian Vision: From Marxism to Feminism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lively, A. (2008). Review of The White Tiger. Sunday Times. Retrieved April 06, 2010 from http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/fiction/article36777 73.ece Marx, K. (1968). Menifesto of The Communist Party. (6th ed). Germany: Progress Publishers. Mattin, D. (2008). A Chatty Murderer Exposes the Underbelly of India's Tiger Economy. Independent on Sunday. Retrieved May 11, 2010 from http://www.independent.co.uk/artsentertainment/books/reviews/the-white-tiger-by-aravind-adiga-823472.html Mukherji, N. (2008). Exposing the Real India. The Telegraph. 27 April. Retrieved 26 December, 2010 from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/fictionreviews/3672930/Exposing-thereal-India.html Padmanabham, M. (2008). Bleached House Cat. Outlook India. Retrieved May 5, 2010 from http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?237351 Parker, P. (2009). Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga. The Sunday Times. Retrieved July 05, 2010 from http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/fiction/article66242 93

61.ece Parsannarajan, S. (2008). Driving Out of Darkness. India Today. Retrieved April 17, 2010 from http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/7128/SOCIETY%20&%20THE%20ARTS/Books:+Dr iving+out+of+darkness.html Raheem, S. (2008). The White Tiger. Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved April 11, 2010 from http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/india/adigaa.html Robins, P. (2010). Review of The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. The Telegraph. Retrieved February 1, 2010 from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/fictionreviews/3558130/Review-The-White-Tigerby-Aravind-Adiga.html Rushby, K. (2008). His Monster's Voice. The Guardian. Retrieved April 11, 2010 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/apr/19/featuresreviews.guardianreview19/print Sakina, R. (February 06, 2011). Detractors and excited young fans attended the launch of Bina Shahs fifth book. The Express Tribune. Retrieved December 09, 2012 from http://tribune.com.pk/story/114702/detractors-and-excited-young-fans-attended-the-launchof-bina-shahs-fifth-book/ Saleem, M. (2010). Karachi Note book: An Evening with Bina Shah. The Karachi Walla. Retrieved December 09, 2012 from http://thekarachiwalla.com/2011/05/02/karachi-life-an-eveningwith-bina-shah/ Saunders, K. (2008). Review of The White Tiger. The Times. Retrieved May 01, 2010 from http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/fiction/article38575 32.ece Sebastian, J.A. (2009). Poor Rich Divide in Aravind Adigas The White Tiger. Journal of Alternative Perspectives in Social Sciences. Segal, F. (2008). When the Eternal Allure of India Wears Thin. The Observer. Retrieved April 13, 2010 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/apr/13/features.review/print Shah, B. (November 10, 2010). Slum Child. Westland Tranquebar Press and Eastwest. Retrieved December 10, 2012 from http://www.westlandbooks.in/book_details.php?cat_id=4&book_id=217 Sharma, S. (December 19, 2010). The Hues and Lows of Pakistan. The Financial Express. Retrieved December 09, 2012 from http://www.financialexpress.com/news/the-hues-and-lows-ofpakistan/726517 Singh, K. (2010). Aravind Adigas The White Tiger: A Voice of the Underclass - A Postcolonial Dialectics. Journal of Literature, Culture and Media Studies. Smith, J. (July 4, 2009). Between the Assassinations: A Review. The Times. Retrieved November 23, 2010 from http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6624614.ece 94

Sommers, H. C. (1994). Who Stole Feminism. NY: Simon & Schuster. Tejuja, V. (December 18, 2010). Bina Shahs Slum Child is not an easy read. Ibnlive. Retrieved December 02, 2012 from http://ibnlive.in.com/news/bina-shahs-slum-child-is-not-an-easyread/137839-40-101.html Thokar, A.I. (2012). Appearance vs Reality: Exposition of Faulty Political System in Adigas The White Tiger. The Criterion: An International Journal in English. Retrieved June 29, 2010 from: http://www.the-criterion.com Thomas, L. (2008). 'White Tiger': When life is to eat or be eaten. San Fransisco Chronicle. Retrieved April 29, 2010 from: http://www.sfgate.com/cgibin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/27/RVNOVUMEP.DTL Turpin, A. (2008). The White Tiger. Financial Times. Retrieved April 19, 2010 from: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/886f92c4-09c8-11dd-81bf0000779fd2ac,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms% 2Fs%2F0%2F886f92c4-09c8-11dd-81bf0000779fd2ac.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.completereview.com%2Freviews%2Findia%2Fadigaa.html Vinod, J. (April 28, 2012). Book Review: Slum Child by Bina Shah. Vinnowed. Retrieved November 25, 2012 from http://winnowed.blogspot.com/2012/04/book-review-slum-child-by-binashah.html Woods, A. (2000). Marxism and Feminism. The Workers International League FAQ. Retrieved December 04, 2012 from http://www.socialistappeal.org/faq/feminism.html Woods, A. (2001, July 18). Marxism vs Feminsim - Class Struggle and Emancipation of Women. In Defense of Marxism. Retrieved December 01, 2012 from http://www.marxist.com/marxismfeminism-class-struggle-emancipation-women.htm

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FURTHER READING
Adiga, A. (2008). Last Christmas in Bandra. The Times. Retrieved 23 December, 2010 from http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/articl e5369795.ece Adiga, A. (2008). Smack. The Sunday Times. Retrieved November 19, 2010 from http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and.../books/article5139563.ece Assiter, A. (1996). Enlightened Women: Modernist Feminism in a Postmodern Age. London: Taylor & Francis Group Bammer, A. (2000). Partial Visions: Feminism and Utopianism in 1970s. NY: Routledge. Bobel, C. (2010). New Blood. London: Routledge. Cornell, D. (1998). At the Heart of Freedom: Feminism, Sex and Equality. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Cornwell, A., Harrison, Elizabeth., & Whitehead, Ann. (2007). Feminism in Development: Contradiction, Contestations and Challenges. London: Zed Books. DyHouse, C. (2010). Glamor: Women, History and Feminism. London: Zed Books. Eric, E.J. (2010). Marxism, Liberalism and Feminism. New Delhi, India: Serials Publications. Fehr, D., Jonasdottir, A.G., & Rosenbeck, B. (1998). Is There a Nordic Feminism. UK: University College London Press. Feranald, A.E. (2006). Virginia Wolf: Feminism and The Reader. NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Grosz, E. (2005). Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power. Australia: Ellen & Unwin. Hamid, M. (2000). Moth Smoke. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Heilmann, A. (2000). New Women Fiction: Women Writing First Wave Feminism. UK: Macmillan Press Limited. Jenainati, C., & Groves, J. (2003). Introducing Feminism. USA: Totem Books. Mcrobbie, A. ( 2009). Of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage Publications. Mousli, B. (2009). Women, Feminism and Femininity in 21st Century. NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Nye, A. (2004). Feminism and Modern Philosophy: an Introduction. New York: Taylor and Francis Group. Ramazanoglu, C. (1993). Up against Foucault: Exploration of Some Tensions Between Foucault and Feminism. London: Routledge. 96

Roy, A. (1997). The God of Small Things. London: Flamingo. Sandilands, C. (2000). Feminism, the Family and the Politics of the Closet: Lesbian and Gay Displacement. UK: Oxford University Press. Tolan, F. (2007). Margaret Atwood: Feminism and Fiction. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi Press. Tomlinson, B. (2010). Feminism and Affect at the Scene of Argument. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. White, A. (2010). African American Doing Feminism: Putting Theory into Everyday Practice. Albany, New York: State University New York Press. Wilde, O. (1986). The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays. Britain: Penguin Books.

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