A Conversation of Rumors: Indian Subalterns’ Strategy for Micro-Political Struggle

Rumor is the enabling mode of protest for Indian peasant subalterns, making it possible for them to transmit their messages with an ease and rapidity that the ruling classes often found bewildering, thus avoiding individual responsibility. The analysis of four Indian novels written in English, The Village, Kanthapura, Cradle of the Clouds and A Suitable Boy, which spans from 1920s to 1960s, when the Indian nationalist movement, the land reform and modernization after Indian independence were in full swing, makes it clear that rumor makes the peasant subalterns the subject of history with their own distinctive forms of consciousness and making sense of and acting upon the world on its own terms.