Literature thrives on its characters, those complex and flawed figures who embody the tensions of their worlds. In postcolonial fiction, particularly, characters become vessels for historical trauma, cultural negotiation, and identity formation. Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss presents a constellation of such figures, each grappling with the legacies of colonialism and the upheavals of globalisation. Their struggles between tradition and modernity, belonging and exile, privilege and marginalisation reflect broader postcolonial dilemmas. Yet as critics have noted, Desai’s characterisations sometimes risk reducing these individuals to symbolic representations rather than fully realised beings. This article examines the novel’s central characters, analysing how they embody critical aspects of the narrative while also interrogating whether they transcend their thematic functions to become psychologically whole.

Characters in literature serve multiple purposes. They drive plot, manifest themes, and invite readerly empathy. In postcolonial works, historical forces are often personified, with their crises mirroring collective ones. Desai’s characters, while vividly drawn, occasionally seem overdetermined by their symbolic roles. As we will see, figures like Jemubhai epitomise colonial self-loathing, while Biju’s diasporic suffering illustrates global inequality. The tension between their humanity and their allegorical weight raises questions about the novel’s success in balancing individual subjectivity with broader critique.

Major Characters and Their Critical Functions

Judge Jemubhai Patel: The Haunted Anglophile

Jemubhai’s trajectory from a marginalised Indian student at Cambridge to a bitter, self-hating judge exemplifies what Frantz Fanon termed the “colonised intellectual’s” crisis in Black Skin, White Masks. His violent rejection of Indianness, symbolised by his contempt for his arranged marriage and his obsession with English manners, reflects the internalised racism of colonial education. As Gauri Viswanathan notes in Masks of Conquest, British pedagogy in India sought to create “mimic men,” and Jemubhai’s transformation into a cruel, isolated figure illustrates the dehumanising effects of this process.

Yet Jemubhai’s characterisation sometimes verges on melodrama. His relentless misanthropy and one-dimensional cruelty, particularly in his abuse of his dog Mutt, risk reducing him to a cautionary symbol rather than a psychologically complex figure. While his arc powerfully critiques colonialism’s psychic violence, as David Scott argues in Conscripts of Modernity, such portrayals can obscure the systemic nature of oppression by focusing too narrowly on individual pathology. The judge’s complete inability to reconcile his Indian identity with his colonial education presents an interesting contrast to the more nuanced literary depictions of hybridity found in works by writers such as V.S. Naipaul or Salman Rushdie.

Sai: The Liminal Cosmopolitan

Caught between her elite convent education and her crumbling aristocratic world, Sai embodies Homi Bhabha’s “unhomely” subject from The Location of Culture. Her hybrid identity, neither entirely Western nor traditionally Indian, mirrors the dissonances of postcolonial modernity. Her romance with Gyan, a Nepali tutor involved in the Gorkhaland movement, highlights the novel’s exploration of class and ethnic divides, providing one of the narrative’s few moments of genuine human connection.

However, Sai’s passivity and vague introspection sometimes render her a cypher. As Berthold Schoene observes in The Cosmopolitan Novel, she functions more as a lens for observing others than as a fully developed protagonist. Her ultimate resignation in the face of life’s complexities, expressed through the sentiment that “truth was apparent… if briefly,” feels unearned, a flaw critics like Anne Anlin Cheng attribute to the novel’s uneven engagement with trauma in The Melancholy of Race. Sai’s character raises essential questions about the portrayal of young women in postcolonial fiction, often positioned as observers rather than actors in their narratives.

Biju: The Disposable Migrant

Biju’s struggles as an undocumented worker in New York expose the brutal realities of global labour exploitation. His narrative, fragmented across kitchens and sweatshops, echoes Aihwa Ong’s analysis of “flexible citizenship” in her work of the same name, where migrants are stripped of rights yet are essential to capitalist economies. His eventual return to India, hollowed and defeated, powerfully critiques the myth of immigrant success that dominates both Western and Indian imaginations.

Yet as Rey Chow contends in The Protestant Ethnic, Biju’s suffering often feels fetishised, his humanity overshadowed by his role as a symbol of diasporic precarity. The novel’s lack of interiority for Biju, especially when compared to the psychological depth given to Jemubhai or Sai, reinforces what Gayatri Spivak calls the “sanctioned ignorance” of subaltern representation in A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Biju’s story, while emotionally affecting, ultimately serves more as a critique of global capitalism than as a fully realised character study, raising questions about whether Desai could have more effectively balanced social commentary with character development.

The Cook: The Unseen Subaltern

The Cook’s quiet dignity and unwavering hope for Biju’s success embody what Partha Chatterjee terms the “popular” resilience of subaltern classes in The Nation and Its Fragments. His devotion to Jemubhai, despite the latter’s cruelty, reflects the entrenched hierarchies of postcolonial society that persist even after independence. His final reunion with Biju offers one of the novel’s rare moments of genuine tenderness, yet as Schoene notes, its abruptness undermines its emotional impact and leaves important questions about their future unresolved.

The Cook represents an interesting paradox in the novel. While he is perhaps the most sympathetic character, he also receives the least narrative attention, his inner life remaining largely opaque to readers. This treatment aligns with traditional literary representations of servant classes but feels particularly striking in a novel that purports to critique social hierarchies. His character raises essential questions about who gets to be a fully realised subject in postcolonial literature and who remains confined to symbolic or functional roles.

Gyan: The Frustrated Revolutionary

Gyan’s involvement in the Gorkhaland movement channels Mahmood Mamdani’s analysis of ethnic nationalism in Citizen and Subject. His rage at Sai’s privilege, expressed in his accusation that she is “like slaves running after the West,” articulates the novel’s central tension between local struggles and global aspirations. However, his abrupt ideological shifts and underdeveloped backstory dilute his potential as a counterpoint to Jemubhai’s elitism.

A deeper examination of Gyan’s character reveals several vital dimensions. First, his political awakening reflects the complex realities of ethnic movements in postcolonial India, where marginalised groups continue to fight for recognition within the nation-state framework. Second, his relationship with Sai embodies the class tensions that persist even among educated Indians, showing how colonial hierarchies have been reconfigured rather than eliminated. Ultimately, his eventual disillusionment with both the movement and his relationships underscores the challenges of maintaining revolutionary ideals in the face of complex social realities.

Gyan’s character could have served as a powerful exploration of postcolonial masculinity, particularly in contrast to Jemubhai’s colonial-era masculinity and Biju’s diasporic masculinity. However, the novel’s limited engagement with his inner life and motivations leaves this potential largely unexplored. His abrupt disappearance from the narrative in the final sections feels particularly unsatisfying, as it denies readers closure on one of the novel’s most politically charged character arcs.

Lola and Noni: The Comic Mimics

The Anglophile sisters, with their absurd reverence for Western goods, satirise what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o calls the “cultural bomb” of colonialism in Decolonising the Mind. Their performative hybridity, exemplified by their treasuring of Swiss army knives as “talismans,” offers a sharp critique of postcolonial mimicry. Yet as Elleke Boehmer notes in Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, their caricatured portrayal risks reducing them to comic relief, neglecting the pathos underlying their cultural alienation.

A closer examination of Lola and Noni reveals deeper layers to their characters. Their clinging to Western objects represents not just simple mimicry but a survival strategy in a world that has devalued their Indian identity while never fully accepting them as Western. Their characterisations raise essential questions about gender and ageing in postcolonial contexts, particularly how middle-class Indian women of their generation negotiated the transition from colonialism to independence. While their scenes provide comic relief, they also offer poignant moments that reveal the loneliness and vulnerability beneath their performative Westernness.

The sisters’ relationship with Sai presents one of the novel’s more intriguing dynamics, illustrating how generational differences manifest in their attitudes toward culture and identity. Their attempts to mentor Sai while clinging to their illusions about Western superiority create moments of both humour and pathos. However, like several other characters in the novel, they ultimately feel underdeveloped, their potential as complex representations of postcolonial femininity remaining largely untapped.