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caste girls into their households? Where have the rules of caste and religion fallen today
[…]?‖ (ibid.: 236). Feeling punished for being ―stuck among Christians and meat-eaters in
this strange town‖ (ibid.: 232), Jayamma holds on to the stereotyped worldview. She does not
change her opinion even after she finds out that the Hoyka girl she despised is in fact a lonely
little girl and the Brahmin boy that she cared for behaves like a spoilt prat.
The concept of identity presenting it as a rigid, unchanging entity simply does not
work for Shankara, Ziauddin and the other characters in the book. What Adiga‘s narrative
suggests about identity does definitely correspond with current trends and theories in the field
since they both emphasize the elusiveness of identity and the impossibility to fix it. Of course,
Adiga‘s portrayal of this matter is situated in more or less absurd and even (tragi)comic
circumstances, but the essence of the problem remains the same, i.e. it is impossible to fix
identity in a particular place and time and keep it solid forever whether on the personal or on
the national level. India, presented through the microcosm of Kittur, seems to be as intangible
as its inhabitants. The book is flooded with numerable references to various religious
denominations, caste divisions or nationalities. For a non-insider it is fairly difficult to
orientate within the intricate Indian system of castes and religious denominations which
determine the social status of the members of these groups respectively. Moreover, the
linguistic variety of the town working in accord with the caste and religious divisions are
remindful of the chaotic organization of Babel.
In conclusion, Between the Assassinations abounds in foreboding images and
portrayals. There seems to be no sense of a collective self that would unite the town and its
diversified inhabitants; the majority of the characters are egoistic individuals who are
interested solely in their lives, not realizing that without some unity no positive change can be
achieved. Adiga‘s book, then, does not provide a very optimistic portrayal of the multi-
layered society; the stories depicting people struggling with irreversible poverty, corruption
and with an unendurably stratified environment imply that there is a dark ominous cloud
hanging over India like the sword of Damocles.
Bibliography
ADIGA, Aravind (2009). Between the Assassinations. London: Atlantic Books.
BAUMAN, Zygmunt (1996). From Pilgrim to Tourist – or a Short History of Identity. In
Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (Eds.), (2005). Questions of Cultural Identity (18 – 36).
London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: Sage Publications.
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/bkg/tourist/Baumann-pilgrim-tourist.pdf
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