Class Conflict in The Lowland
Over the four generations of family covered in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Lowland, the most compelling central conflict is that of social and economic class, providing the motivation for Udayan to become a Naxalite revolutionary as well as helping to drive the wedge between Bela and her father and providing Gauri with the means to stage her own devastatingly quiet rebellion. Although there are emotional and personal reasons that these characters experience the world the way that they do, the overarching theme from the 1940s to the 1990s is that of inequality and injustice in both India and America, as seen in large-scale political movements like the Naxalites as well as smaller, grassroots efforts like community gardening and rejection of American middle-class norms by Bela.
The lowland itself is the product of the breaking of the traditional Indian system through which some injustice and inequality could be mitigated in a premodern society. The area of the mangrove swamp was cleared for the family of Tipu Sultan, a Muslim revolutionary who attempted to use his princely position to overthrow the British in 1857 and return to the old ways of Raj culture. The British defeated him, and the Mutiny of 1857 overall, and banished his wife and children to the swamp, which they built up as a palace. At independence, Tipu Sultan’s son, Golam Mohammad tried to leverage his social status to protect Muslims in the area from Hindu persecution, exercising that benevolent end of privilege on behalf of the common people, but eventually left (Lahiri 13).
From the beginning of the novel, we see the promise of Indian independence and prosperity after the partition and withdrawal of the British. Subhash and Uda...
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...experiences both and finds them wanting, attempts a middle way at the price of contact with her only child, embracing 1970s liberation to live as an independent professional woman and practice philosophical authenticity. Bela, finally, may be the generation which achieves some peace through knowing the whole tragic history of the family, and balancing her ideals against pragmatic needs for stability and survival. It is unfortunate that Bela only meets her brave Indian grandmother after she is senile, and misses contact with the family’s founding struggler, her grandfather, altogether.
Works Cited
Kunnath, George J. "Becoming a Naxalite in Rural Bihar: Class Struggle and Its Contradictions."
Journal of Peasant Studies 33.1 (2006): 89-123. Taylor & Francis Online. Web. 1 May
2014.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Lowland: A Novel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. Print.
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