Arundhati Roy and Marxist Post-Colonialism

The current project here is to attempt to come to terms with the function of ideology in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. I've got a couple of ideas of how I can come at this. One is to trace the presence of violence and its connections to various ideologies in the novel. One of the prime examples is the "History House" located in the "Heart of Darkness" with its accompanying spirit of Kari Saipu the pedophilic representative of colonialism.
A second question is whether or not there is any interface between the ideology and practices of colonial rule and the brutal punishment for the transgression of Ammu and Velutha against an Indian cultural imperative. The chief of police seems to play a strange double of Pontius Pilate. He at once represents an authority that seems to mimic the functioning of the former colonial system in its relation to the workers and especially untouchables, yet at the same time he is not entirely seperate from the demands for the traditional order voiced by Baby Kochamma and Mammachi.

Finaly, there is the ambigous relation between the narrator and Indian culture. The narrative at once mourns the prostitution of the art of the Kathakali dancers, and takes a very Western stance concerning the place of the individual in society, emphazing personal choice and freedom in the face of the condemnation and violent reprisals of the traditional cultural order.