The inheritance of stereotype

One of Edward Said's contributions to the humanities has been to push scholars to analyse the politics of 'representation', as his own writings did in the case of the creation of the Orient as the 'other', in contrast to Europe. In his book Orientalism, Said exposed the veneer of romance that overlays this way of thinking, generating complacency and almost justifying prejudice. It was in large part Said's writings that led to the creation of postcolonial studies, but analysis of the politics of representation is something far too important to remain confined to academia.

The story of Oriental romance continues in numerous forms, both overt and discreet. Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss, which recently won this year's Man Booker Prize, is a case in point. While representing an individual or group, fiction always contains the possibility of making them overly exotic or romantic. Because of its distance from the majority of the Indian public, this tendency is particularly strong in Indian fiction in English. It is easy for a writer like Desai, for instance, to view the entire community of Nepalis of Kalimpong and Darjeeling through tinted glasses, given that she is writing in English. Had the text been written in Nepali, it would in all likelihood have been rejected by the people it claims to represent.