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.
The picture one gains of the Nepalis of the Darjeeling hills from Desai's book is of a community that is poor and illiterate – perhaps even insignificant – in its entirety. Out of all the Nepalis we meet here, it is only the tuition teacher, Gyan, who is educated; but lest the reader sees him as a learned, ambitious young man, the author makes it a point to show the 'reality' of his existence – the poor, sordid environment of the Bong Busti to which he belongs. In the detailed description of the surroundings of Gyan's shack-like home, the incongruity of his aspirations is meticulously drawn out. Even his involvement in the Gorkhaland movement is left unexplained, evidently not requiring as careful a treatment as the breakfast served to the character of the retired judge when he was a young student in London.
In an interview following the announcement of the Man Booker award, Desai claimed to have drawn a parallel in the book between the Nepali diaspora in India, and Asians, particularly Indians, living and scrounging for work in the US. The parallel can be justified in that a poor Indian's desperation to go to America in order to escape the clutches of poverty of his homeland may be similar to the issues of instability and lack of opportunities that have through the centuries brought many immigrants to India from the Nepal hills and plains. But from this point onwards, critical differences emerge between the two situations. While the Indian immigrants vie for green cards and must constantly be on their toes with regards to paperwork to stay in America, circumstances are not the same for Nepali immigrants in India. The community that Desai has chosen to represent are not immigrants, let alone illegal ones, but Indian citizens with franchise and other rights. The Nepali language itself is recognised in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. The status of Nepalis in India, hence, cannot be relegated entirely to that of cheap labour.