Edward's Reviews > A Suitable Boy

A Suitable Boy describes a year in the life of the fledgling Indian democracy, indirectly told through the experiences of four connected families and a litany of supporting characters, who, due to the diversity of their occupations and social positions, are able to explore various facets – political, legal, social, cultural, religious, artistic – of the India of this period, and the clash of its opposing cultural forces: traditional versus modern values, religion versus secularism, Hinduism versus Islam, Eastern versus Western culture, and democracy versus serfdom, to name a few.

The titular story concerning Mrs Mehra’s search for a husband for her daughter, Lata, though just one of many stories that the novel weaves together, stands out due to what it reveals about the norms and cultural prejudices of the time. We see in Lata an intelligent young woman who has received a modern education, but is pressured by family and cultural expectations to take on a traditional female role (While her plight is no means as bleak, I was reminded of Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, in terms of the dissociation between education and eventual societal role). In Lata’s story there is a contemplation of what it means to seek happiness, an evaluation of the importance of love, of the fine balance between passion and security, of the necessary compromise of values that is thrust on an individual by their cultural context, where to either fight or relent to pressure requires in one way or another a sacrifice or self.

As an outsider, I was struck by the stratification of the society, where one must be utterly obsequious to one’s superiors, and trample upon those below, in order to reinforce one’s status. The caste system locks people into the positions they are assigned at birth, preventing social mobility. In this culture status and position are everything. There is a casual, internalised racism, a sensitivity to the degree of darkness of one’s skin, that manifests in all sorts of interactions, from choosing a mate, to business relationships, to deciding with whom to associate. There is an enormous disparity in fortunes between the wealthy and powerful, who occupy great mansions and large estates, and who are all but unreachable by the law, and the majority of the lower castes, who are forced into subservient roles, living on a pittance in utterly squalid conditions, without any hope of improving their lot. To the list of Hitchens’ Religions That Poison Everything, let us not omit the otherwise fairly innocuous Hinduism, whose dogma of karmic rebirth provides religious justification for this horrible system of oppression. There is evidence in this book of a gradual abandonment of these attitudes, which I hope has been precipitated by the last 70 years of democracy.

Striking also is the extent of social and political disunity, which I’m sure is in no small part due to the “divide and conquer” policy of the British. (It’s amazing the extent that the British were able to transform the country in their own image in such a short time, and the degree to which many of the characters would define themselves as, or aspire to be, English. The closer one dresses, speaks and acts as an Englishman, the more refined he is. Conversely, the more “Indian” he appears by his accent or demeanour, the lower his standing and his desirability. Though there are surely lingering benefits of British colonialism, this kind of internalised oppression seems to me to be fairly odious.) The India of this period is depicted as a heterogeneous multicultural society, where the religious, ethnic, linguistic, cultural and ideological differences constantly threaten to disrupt stability. One gets a real sense of the fragility of the young Indian democracy, where there was a real possibility of failure and collapse. Partition was a tragedy that affects the world to this day, but overall the enduring survival of Indian democracy through these times of turmoil has been a wonderfully fortunate benefit to the world. It is easy to imagine a world where things had turned out differently.

In terms of the prose, I did not enjoy Seth’s bland and relentless Realism. In nearly 1,500 pages, there is not a single sentence worth underlining, not a single interesting metaphor, and rarely anything resembling a profound authorial insight. Instead, the story is told in a flat style of alternating description and dialogue, with the omniscient narrator jumping freely between the thoughts of the different characters. This style has caused the book to be compared to some of the great works of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century, of which it is reminiscent. Many people seem to like this kind of writing, but it’s not my cup of tea.

I’m rating this book more generously than its literary merits would seem to warrant. This is a very long novel, and though it is arguable whether many sections were essential to include, on the whole it paints a thoughtful, detailed and complex picture of post-independence India, with all the wonderful, as well as the disagreeable aspects of its culture. Indeed, the India of Seth’s novel is a land of contradictions, of inequality, of oppression, and yet of hope through the experiment of democracy. If nothing else, I will miss his characters, who, though they are a little saccharine (I don’t disagree with Paul Bryant's assessment), are delightful companions with whom to undertake such a long journey.