Anthropocentric Subaltern: The Protagonist in Indra Sinha’s “Animal’s People”

Abstract

The story of “Animal’s People” is a tale of the residents of Khaufpur, a town, just like Bhopal, which is experiencing the aftereffects of a Gas Tragedy. The protagonist, who is also the narrator, apparently does not have a name and calls himself Animal. He calls himself that because his body (mainly spine) has been disfigured as a result of a chemical accident at a Kampani (“Company”) factory and he can no longer stand upright like a human. It is through the point of view of Animal that we see Zafar, Nisha and other people of the town seek accountability and reparations for the damage done to them by the chemical accident at the Kampani’s factory. While Khaufpuris, like Pandit Somraj who has lost his wife and child, have suffered, there are outsiders as well who stand with the marginalised such as Zafar who is up in arms against the Government officials and the Kampani (Company) which is pulling the strings of these officials, and the American doctor Elli who is helping the victims of the poisoning caused by the accident. While other residents are fighting for justice which is a human right, Animal is simultaneously fighting his own battle of being accepted as a human. The paper attempts to bring to light the Anthropocene that we live in, and the subalterns that arise in the hierarchy of an anthropocentric world. Anthropocentrism, just like Colonialism, consists of a dominating human group, and victims of Colonialism often are also victims of Anthropocentrism, making them subalterns of an Anthropocentric world. I have referred to the subaltern theories of Gramsci and Spivak to identify the subaltern characters in “Animal’s People”. The world of Khaufpur in Indra Sinha’s “Animal’s People” is a microcosm of our planet which has begun experiencing Apocalyptic effects of the Anthropocene. The protagonist, Animal, is a subaltern in all aspects if we consider the subaltern theories of Gramsci and Spivak – he belongs to the lowest strata of hierarchy in the novel and he does not have a voice in his society (which Indra Sinha tries to bring out through this novel). These are the motives that inspired me to study “Animal’s People” with an Ecocritical lens and trace out elements pertaining to the idea of the Anthropocentric subaltern.