Vindicating Communism Against Postcolonialism and Postmodernism: Reimagining Class, Caste, and Gender Solidarities in Meena Kandasamy’s The Gypsy Goddess (2014)

Abstract

In The Gypsy Goddess (2014), Meena Kandasamy offers a searing retelling of the 1968 Kilvenmani Massacre, in which at least forty-four lower-caste agricultural workers, including women and children, were brutally murdered while mobilizing for better living conditions under the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Distinguishing her novel from earlier representations, Kandasamy employs a non-linear and self-reflexive narrative that satirically draws on multiple voices and genres. My paper argues that the novel’s summoning of Kilvenmani’s specters serves a dual function. First, it exposes the limits of Western postcolonial and postmodern academic discourses in the neoliberal era. Second, by resurrecting a foundational episode in post-colonial India’s communist movement, it advances a case for reimagining communism as a credible alternative to intertwined structures of caste, class, and gender oppression. I demonstrate that Kandasamy accomplishes this through an inward critique of her own postmodern form deployed in The Gypsy Goddess, ultimately gesturing toward solidarities later articulated as Social Reproduction Theory.