Comparative postcolonial ruralities and English heritage: Julian Barnes’sEngland, Englandand Kiran Desai’sThe Inheritance of Loss

Abstract

This article argues for the vastly different ways in which English heritage is celebrated as a legacy of the British Empire in rural spaces located both in England and in India. Comparing Julian Barnes's satirical novel England, England (1998) with Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss (2006) affords disparate images of English heritage in postimperial Britain and in postcolonial India. Barnes parodies efforts by the English heritage industry, in an age of decline, to revivify English nationalism and to recollect erstwhile imperial glory. In a globalized world, he underscores the desire for nostalgia preoccupied with a mythic English agrarian past, its historical icons, and its social order as anachronistic instead of inspirational. At best, it appears historically ignorant; at worst, he suggests, it serves as a perversion of reality. For Barnes, the English heritage industry is self-indulgent and largely motivated by profit. In contrast, Desai's novel represents the damage caused by a class structure forged from India's colonial inheritance and a persistent privileging of English culture and heritage. Desai suggests economic power and social prestige, even in an obscure hill village in India, are articulated through material displays and personal knowledge of English heritage, reflecting the different classes' uneven access to capital and knowledge. Her novel simultaneously depicts those at the bottom end of India's class hierarchy who are compelled to acts of desperation in pursuit of better lives.