Colonial Hunger and Hidden Histories: Jeyamohan’s ‘White Elephant’ Comes to English Readers
The Great Famine of 1876–1878 remains one of the darkest chapters in colonial Indian history, a catastrophic event often relegated to dry statistics in academic textbooks. However, a powerful new English translation of Tamil author B. Jeyamohan’s novel White Elephant (published by HarperCollins in 2026) breathes visceral, haunting life into this era, centering on the forgotten plight of Dalit workers in Madras. Originally published in Tamil in 2013 as Vellai Yaanai, the novel has now arrived for a global audience, expertly translated by Priyamvada Ramkumar.
A City Built on Desperation
The narrative unfolds against the backdrop of a famine-stricken Madras, where the colonial administration largely prioritizes the export of grain from ports like Vizag and Nagore over the survival of the local populace. At the heart of the story is Captain Aiden Byrne, a character who embodies the tragic impotence of those who recognized the gravity of the crisis but failed to change the trajectory of colonial indifference.
While the city expands, it does so on the backs of thousands of displaced rural laborers. Seeking refuge from the scorched earth of their villages, many Dalits found themselves drawn to the notorious Tudor Ice House—a facility designed to store ice imported from New England for the comfort of the colonial elite. The irony is sharp and brutal: as the poor starved, they were forced into backbreaking labor to preserve frozen luxuries they would never taste.
The Strike That History Forgot
One of the most compelling aspects of Jeyamohan’s work is its focus on a poorly documented 1878 factory workers’ strike. The novel highlights this as one of the earliest instances of organized labor protest in the subcontinent. Jeyamohan masterfully contrasts the motivations of the American factory manager, Nick Parmer, and the high-caste Indian contractor, Murahari Iyengar.
Parmer’s eventual capitulation to the workers, driven largely by a desire to avoid bad press back in the United States, stands in stark contrast to the cold, calculated cruelty of Iyengar, who threatens the participants with permanent blacklisting. This tension exposes the intersection of colonial capitalism and the deeply entrenched local caste hierarchy, showing how both systems conspired to exploit the most vulnerable.
Complexity Within the Oppressed
White Elephant does not paint the marginalized as a monolithic block; instead, it meticulously portrays the internal friction within the working class. Through the characters of Karuppan and Kathavarayan, the novel explores the struggle for agency. While Karuppan works tirelessly to build solidarity and unite his peers in protest, Kathavarayan represents a more pragmatic, perhaps more disillusioned approach, seeking compromise to ensure basic survival.
Furthermore, the work is enriched by its literary resonance, weaving in the influence of Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. By re-examining the colonial era through a Tamil lens, Ramkumar’s translation does more than just retell a story; it reclaims a perspective that has long been sidelined by Western-centric historical accounts.
Jeyamohan’s White Elephant is a sobering reminder of the human cost of empire. It forces readers to look past the monuments and infrastructure of colonial Madras to see the missing, the nameless, and the resilient workers who were the true, often invisible, foundation of the colonial project.
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