Animal’s People Background

Literary Fiction

Animal’s People is a work of literary fiction, following the life and relationships of a deformed 19-year-old boy in the aftermath of a profound industrial disaster in fictional Khaufpur, India. The story is told through his first-person narration, and the events are presented in relation to his point of view of being an “animal” outsider. His monologue account is framed by the decision to record his story and his reflection on that decision. This personal narration also informs the plot structure, which contains some flashbacks as well as sequential narration.

Animal’s use of the present tense in telling past events allows The Eyes (and the reader) to experience his story more intimately alongside him. It also creates a question of narrator reliability, as his first-person account offers only a limited, assumptive perspective on the other characters’ motives and actions. If The Eyes symbolize the outside world, Animal himself, with this twisted frame and will to survive, symbolizes his people.

Although the events following the 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India, serve as a backdrop to this novel, and though the Editor’s Note prefaces the novel as true, Sinha asserts that it is a fictionalized account. The fictional editor’s translation of the tapes includes language that blends Hindi, French, English, and fictional Khaufpuri language, which may not have an English equivalent. A Khaufpuri glossary is provided at the end of the novel.

Context

On the night of December 3, 1984, an accident at the American-owned Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, released at least 45 tons of methyl isocyanate into the densely populated neighborhoods surrounding the plant. The highly toxic gas, used in the production of insecticide, killed thousands of people immediately. More than 600,000 were exposed to the gas cloud that night; the final death toll estimates that between 15,000 and 20,000 people were killed as a direct result of the gas leak. Those who did not die immediately continued to suffer in the decades that followed. Nearly half a million survivors suffered respiratory problems, blindness, miscarriages, birth defects, and more resulting from exposure to the toxic gas and the consequent soil and water contamination.

Later investigations determined that substandard operating and safety procedures led to the tragedy, and many victims were awarded compensation of a few hundred dollars. Despite protests and attempts at litigation, survivors and human rights groups continue to fight to have the site cleaned up, citing thousands of tons of hazardous waste remaining underground. Neither the Indian government nor the Dow Chemical Company, which bought out Union Carbide in 2001, have properly cleaned the site. In 2010, several former executives of Union Carbide’s Indian subsidiary—all Indian citizens—were convicted of negligence by a Bhopal court.

Sinha dedicated Animal’s People to Sunil Kumar, a victim and activist of the Bhopal disaster, who passed away by suicide at the age of 34.