Transgression of the “laws of love” in The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy: national and personal stories taken in transitionIn a an attempt to define the history and modern identity of postcolonial nations, Partha Chatterjee draws attention to the many paradoxes inherent in the Indian cultural fabric. It is a country, he notes, with a modern culture based on indigenous tradition that was influenced by its colonial period. This modern culture contains conflicts and contradictions which create ambiguity in the national identity of India. UR Anantha Murthy understands Indian culture as a mosaic of tradition and modernity. He writes about a heterodox reality where the intellectual self is in conflict with the emotional, the rational individual experiences the sad nostalgia of exile from his traditional roots and, by oscillating between belief and non-belief, he resolves his dilemmas. This article attempts to read the transgression of the "laws of love" in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things not only as the representation of this heterodox modernity in the personal domain as a reflection of a broader national conflict, but also like the dilemmas of a postcolonial writer in search of an identity and their difficulties in expressing it. Roy's God of Small Things illustrates history as "a dominant and oppressive force that saturates virtually all social and cultural spaces, including familial, intimate, and emotional relationships." (Needham 372). The small personal conflicts that play out within the Ipe family symbolize the larger historical struggles of the entire nation. The story can then be read as a "national allegory", a term that Frederic Jameson uses in the context of third world texts and explains that "third world texts, e...... middle of paper. .... .ly dramatizes the postcolonial writer's dilemma that Anantha Murthy had spoken about. His writings and concerns are clearly subversive to traditional bastions of power and remain clear of the trappings of regressive social forces. On the other hand, through his creative use of language, Roy engages in a dialogue with the West, challenging dominant narratives of Indian history. It does not limit itself to repairing the “insults” of a colonial past, but is also deeply aware of the shadow of an older precolonial history. In his account of Transgressions, Roy offers the perspective of a nation in transition and reveals himself to be a product of its postcolonial culture. It makes no clear choice between tradition and modernity in an exclusive manner, striving instead to arrive at a heterodox reality that does not belie the complexities of Indian consciousness..