"Hey! Do you like my Urban Outfitters duvet cover that appropriates and is insensitive to Eastern religion?"

Edward Said's book Orientalism describes the complex relationship between the Western and Eastern worlds.  This relationship is often fraught with tension and amazement.  The West looks at the East with both condescension and amazement, hence the term "orient."  They treated them as less civilized and in need of their help to justify imperialism.  With this facade, Europeans created a deeply ingrained racism that still pervades Western culture.  An example of the vestiges of this carefully constructed relationship can be found in the recent controversy of an Urban Outfitter duvet cover that featured Lord Ganesh, a Hindu deity.  This placement of the deity on an item that would be used as anything other than art was offensive and another example of companies led by white people making money from cultural appropriation.

In The God of Small Things, the relationship between India and England is clearly similar to what Said describes.  The Indians have had their history erased by the English and because of that, have no roots or sense of heritage that is important to their highly traditional culture.  The ancestors are replaced by the English at the top of the traditional hierarchy of Indian culture.  This change leads to the idolization of the English that is present in Baby Kochama's character who goes out of her way to quote Shakespeare in an attempt to please her English family members.  This relationship is problematic and a major source of conflict in the story.  The Indians cannot get into the history house and connect with their ancestors because they have been labeled as "oriental" and have suffered the consequences.