https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i4.103
Everyday Assassinations: Structural Violence, Social Death and the Politics of the “In-Between” in Aravind Adiga’s Between the Assassinations
J. JEREMIAH WILFRED ISAAC
Ph.D. Research Scholar (Reg. No. 2511214021001)
PG and Research Department of English
Nazareth Margoschis College at Pillaiyanmanai, Nazareth – 628617
(Affiliated to Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Abishekapatti, Tirunelveli)
Email: jeremiahwilfred1@gmail.com
DR. J. MARY STELLA
Research Guide and Supervisor
Assistant Professor of English
PG and Research Department of English
Nazareth Margoschis College at Pillaiyanmanai, Nazareth – 628617
(Affiliated to Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Abishekapatti, Tirunelveli)
Email: stellaponraj2008@gmail.com
Abstract: Aravind Adiga’s Between the Assassinations (2008) presents the fictional coastal town of Kittur through a series of interconnected narratives situated between two historically significant political assassinations in India: the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and that of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. Although the title apparently directs attention towards political violence, Adiga’s narrative reveals a more pervasive and less spectacular form of violence operating within everyday life. Poverty, caste hierarchy, religious suspicion, corrupt institutions, exploitative labour, gendered vulnerability and social exclusion repeatedly destroy the dignity and aspirations of ordinary individuals. This article proposes the concept of “Everyday Assassinations” to describe these slow, structural acts of social destruction. Drawing upon Johan Galtung’s theory of structural violence, Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence, Michel Foucault’s understanding of disciplinary power, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of subalternity, the paper argues that Adiga transforms the conventional meaning of assassination from a single political act into a continuing social process. Through selected narratives- “The Railway Station,” “St. Alfonso’s Boys’ High School and Junior College,” “The Sultan’s Battery,” “The Cool Water Well Junction,” and “Umbrella Street,” the article demonstrates how Kittur functions as a social laboratory in which individuals are not necessarily killed physically but are progressively deprived of identity, mobility, dignity and voice. The paper further argues that the temporal space “between” the two assassinations becomes an important narrative and political space: history appears not only through spectacular national events but through the ordinary lives that official histories frequently overlook. Adiga’s fragmented narrative therefore constitutes an alternative archive of postcolonial India in which the lives of marginalised people become evidence of the nation’s unfinished promises.
Keywords: Violence, Everyday Assassinations, Subalternity, Caste, Poverty, Communalism, Kittur, Postcolonial India
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