The Ecology of Nationalism and the Representation of Lower Castes in the Novel Tamas

Abstract

The colonization of India had awful consequences on the lives of people as the nation was severely affected by problems like poverty, illiteracy, unhygienic and callous living producing, in addition to the already prevailing sociological and economic problems, environmental and conservational crisis, the root cause of which was to be found in the incessant exploitation of natural resources by the ruling European colonial powers in India. Resultantly, the Gandhian struggle for independence could not restrict itself merely to the primary objective of acquiring a politically independent statehood for India, but it had to keep on its agenda also problems of ecology, hygiene and conservation. The novel Tamas describes analogous labors made by the congress working committee volunteers in the Muslim area despite antagonism by the Muslim League workers. This ecology of nationalism, however, could not sustain long as the ecological purity of a mosque and a temple, in retaliatory action, was polluted by the perpetrators. The novel regularly, throughout the narrative,  establishes a connection between the ideas of pureness and dirtiness and the consequential communal clashes in the city by showing how harmony and mutual veneration for each other’s community, the so-called ecology of nationalism and political unity, was thwarted by an error of  Nathu, a member of the lower caste community. In a broad sense, the character of Nathu is presented representatively in a way to demonstrate how the act of a socially impure community was accountable for the fall of the ecology of Indian nationalism rather than the political desires and mistakes of leadership.