70 pages • 2-hour read
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
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Background
Authorial Context: Kiran Desai
Kiran Desai is an Indian author from New Delhi who spent portions of her youth in the United Kingdom and the United States before settling in New York. She published her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, in 1998 about a man who settles in a tree to escape adult responsibilities, but is soon mistaken for a religious prophet.
In 2006, after settling in New York, Desai published her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss. The novel traces parallel storylines that take place in the United States and India. Biju, an undocumented Indian immigrant in the United States, pursues employment opportunities while his mother works for Jemubhai Patel, a retired judge who lives in the mountains of West Bengal. Much like The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Desai’s second novel probes Western colonial influence on India. The character of Patel rejects Indian customs and culture, believing it inferior to those of the British. This puts his character in conversation with many of the characters who populate Desai’s third novel. For instance, Sunny’s mother, Babita Bhatia, thinks in a similar way to Patel, believing that life in New York is infinitely better than life in New Delhi. This influence affects Sunny, who inherits Babita’s Western aspirations but wrestles with his complicity in the unjust economic order that leaves India disproportionately underdeveloped in the wake of British imperialism.
The parallels between Desai’s second and third novels suggest that the author is deeply interested in globalization as a general theme, though instead of romanticizing it, she uses it to examine the ways that globalization has evolved out of the history of colonialism. As a result, many of Desai’s globalized characters experience regular displacement, disenfranchisement, and alienation.
Historical Context: The Partition of India
The 1947 Partition of India is frequently referenced throughout Desai’s novel, making it beneficial for readers to familiarize themselves with the facts of the event and its impact on Indian society.
In the wake of the Second World War, immense financial strain made it necessary for the British Empire to withdraw from South Asia. One of the logistical challenges facing Britain stemmed from their “Divide and Rule” approach to governance, stoking tensions between India’s Hindu and Muslim populations to consolidate military power over the territory. Consequently, there was overwhelming demand from Indian Muslims, represented by All-India Muslim League leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah, to establish a separate state to avoid unfair social treatment by the majority Hindu population.
By 1945, Britain announced its intent to dissolve the British Raj and cede power to India by 1948. Despite the British government’s best attempts to convince both religious groups to form a united India, increased violence between Hindus and Muslims made the odds of partition inevitable. To expedite withdrawal, the British government secretly moved the independence date to August 1947 and used outdated maps and census reports to hastily draw borders between India and the Muslim state of Pakistan, the latter of which would be contained in two non-contiguous territories.
These borders were not publicly announced until two days after the declaration of Indian independence, sparking a mass migration crisis marked by extreme violence between the two groups as millions fled to the states where they were considered the religious majority. Since a large number of Muslims elected to stay in India, sectarian violence continued into the next year. It is estimated that over a million people died due to partition-related violence, cementing the historical foundations for present-day tensions between India and Pakistan.
The older characters in Desai’s novel lived through the violence of the Partition, which not only traumatized them, but impacted their relationships with their children. Sunny and Sonia represent the third generation after the Partition, which Desai juxtaposes against the emerging event of globalization at the end of the 20th century.
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