International Journal of English,

and Literature (IJEL)

ISSN(P): 2249-6912; ISSN(E): 2249-8028
Vol. 5, Issue 6, Dec 2015, 73-78
TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.

A STUDY OF SUBALTERN SUFFERING IN ROHINTON

MISTRYS A FINE BALANCE
M. MANIKANDAN
Assistant Professor of English, J.J.College of Arts and Science (Autonomous), Pudukkottai, Tamil Nadu, India
ABSTRACT
Rohinton Mistry is a prominent writer to emerge from the Parsi community in India. He migrated to Canada
in his early twenties as he wanted to become a Pop singer. He has confessed in various interviews that he migrated
because it was the fashion of the times. He is an author who is writing about the India which he has seen and observed
during his youth. In his novels, Mistry has expressed the pain and grief of immigrant writers who were born in India but
staying away from their motherland. His novel A Fine Balance (1995) is set in an unnamed city that the reader can
easily guess as Bombay, the authors native city.
A Fine Balance revolves around the lives of four protagonists; each very different from the next. They find
themselves thrown together in the same humble city apartment: Dinabhai, a widow who refuses to remarry and fights to

in the hope of finding work; and a student, Maneck Kohlah, from a village situated at the foothills of the Himalayas.
This article analyzes the theme of subaltern suffering in A Fine Balance.
KEYWORDS: Parsi, Migration, Diaspora, State of Emergency, Immigrant, Subaltern

Received: Nov 17, 2015; Accepted: Nov 27, 2015; Published: Nov 30, 2015; Paper Id.: IJELDEC20159

Original Article

earn a meager living as a seamstress; two tailors, Ishvar and Omprakash, uncle and nephew, who have come to the city

INTRODUCTION
The word subaltern is drawn from the Latin subaltern us in the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictonary
the word, subaltern, as noun means any officer in the British army who is lower in rank than a captain.
Its adjectival form denotes of inferior rank. But Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci for the first time used it outside
in the non-military sense. In Latin sub means under and alter means other. So literally it denotes any person
or group of inferior rank or considered inferior. According to some thinkers, he used the term as a synonym for
proletariat. Literally, it refers to any person or group of inferior rank and station, whether because of race, caste,
gender, ethnicity or religion. Antonic Gramsci opines that the subaltern classes allude to any lower rank person or
group of citizens in a distinct society suffering under the hegemonic domination of the governing aristocratic class
that denies them the fundamental rights of involvement in the making of provincial history and culture as active
individuals in and of the same country.
Rohinton Mistry is one of the internationally acknowledged writers since his works have won
international accolades. He is the author of three novels and a short story collection set amidst the closely knit and
isolated Parsi community in Bombay. His writings bear a social purpose. He is one of the prominent writers of the
post colonial era. His novels deal with the theme of exploitation based on political, economic, and social aspects
stressing the necessity of social purpose in fiction. He is one of the novelists who have dealt with plight of

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M. Manikandan

untouchables in his novel. In A Fine Balance Untouchability is a theme. Dalitism has been Indias gravest societal evil
since time immemorial and is still praised in various parts of rural India. The so called, downtrodden- or lower castes are
not allowed to educate because education may enlighten them on their rights as citizens and there may claim their rights.
Then Caste discrimination and repression are mostly found in practice among the Hindus of India.
A Fine Balance is Mistrys masterpiece. It is his second novel. It was published in 1995. It won the second annual
Giller Prize and Commonwealth Writers Prize. The subject-matter of this work of art is India. Set against the Emergency
Measures imposed by the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the mid-1970s, the novel is a powerful and painful
examination of a society beset by socio-political repression. It is a record of a painful era portrayed with remarkable
poignancy and honesty. Here, Mistry concentrates on the criminalization of politics as it began with the Emergency in
1975. Suspension of basic fundamental rights granted by the constitution led to widespread resentment among opposition
parties and there was a call for the total revolution spearheaded by the late Jayprakash Narayan.
In A Fine Balance, Mistry portrays the atrocities committed on two untouchables from a village and the suffering
of the poor characters from the Parsi community. Mistry uses four main characters a woman and three men, and a handful
of extraordinary minor ones. Each of the four protagonists has his /her own story and the characters begin to live together
under one roof in the city. The novel is about the sufferings and pain of the poor people. The novel is wonderful
presentation of three major themes. The first is the life of the middle classes in urban area. Dina Dalal is a pretty widow in
her forties who is struggling hard to lead an independent life. Second, there is another world symbolized by Maneck
Kohlah, a sensitive Parsi boy. He feels life as two great a burden to lift. The novel also focuses on rural India things Ishvar
Darji and his nephew Omprakash who struggle to exist in this world. Ansari says,
This microcosm of Indian society that Mistry writes about contains
conflict at an individual as well as a larger level, Mistry is committed
to his cultural roots that provide him infinite inspirational material
for his fiction and with great sensitivity and truthfulness he renders
the tales of protagonists from Parsi community caught in their
beliefs, lifestyles and peculiar situations.(Ansari, 124)
Mistry has chosen characters from minority and suppressed communities. Each character is Indian.
The togetherness of all these characters shows how the people in India manage to live in such a crucial and wretched
condition. Maneck represents the youth of India who were suppressed during emergency. Avinash, a friend of Maneck, a
student leader, is killed in a suspicious way. Manecks life is disturbed by the death of Avinash. Maneck goes to the train
station, his world shattered. He walks out on the tracks as an express train approaches the station and commits suicide by
letting the train run over him. Suicide on a railway track is a common phenomenon in India. As Kapadia points out: these
characters from different class, backgrounds start inter acting with each other and the coincidence does not seem
incongruous (Kapadia 128).
Indian family affinity and hospitality are revealed in A Fine Balance. Maneck comes to Dinas house as a paying
guest and behaves as if he were her son. Maneck is rebellions with his father because he does not want to help his father in
business. In the same way Ishvar wants Om to get married but Om refuses. But at last he agrees to marry. Dina first refuses
to live with her brother Nusswan but later, she is reconciled to him. One can find a kind of Indian family affinity amongst

Impact Factor (JCC): 4.4049

Index Copernicus Value (ICV): 3.0

A Study of Subaltern Suffering in Rohinton Mistrys a Fine Balance

75

the minor characters. The character of Ashraf reveals the Hindu Muslim brotherhood. Narayan and Ishvar save Ashrafs
family from rioting Hindus.
Dina and the tailors business runs fairly smoothly for almost a year, but the effects of the Emergency bother them
often. The Shantytown where the tailors live is knocked down in a governments beautification programme and the
residents are uncompensated and forced to move into the streets. Later Ishvar and Omprakash are rounded up by a police
beggar raid and are sold to a labor camp. After two months in the camp they bribe their way out with the help of the
Beggarmaster. Ishvar and Omprakash are lucky and Dina decides to let them stay with her. The tailors and Dina find
trouble from the landlord because she is not supposed to be running a business from her flat. She pretends that Ishvar is her
husband and Om their son she also get protection from the Beggar master.
Ishvar and Om return to their village to find a wife for Omprakash who is now eighteen. Maneck also returns
home. He takes a lucrative job in Middle Eastern Dubai. Dina, being alone now, and her protector the Beggar master
having been murdered, has no protection from the landlord who wants to break her apartments rent control and charge
more rent. So she is evicted. Dina is again forced to live with her brother, Nusswan.
Omprakash and Ishvar return to their old town Ashraf Chacha gives them a place to stay while they search for
marriage prospects for Om. Ishvar and Om become the victims of forced sterilization. The vasectomy takes place. After
vasectomy they suffer from infection.
Eight years later, Maneck returns home for the first time from Dubai for his fathers funeral. Maneck is repulsed
by the violence that follows after the Prime Ministers assassination, for which Sikhs are killed. He returns home and
attends the funeral. While at home he reads old newspapers and learns that Avinashs three sisters have hanged themselves,
unable to bear their parents humiliation at not being able to provide dowries for their marriages. Shocked and shaken, he
decides to visit Dina in Mumbai for better news. He learns from Dina the horrific lives that Ishvar and Om one disabled
and the other castrated have led as beggars after their village visit. As Maneck leaves, he encounters Om and Ishvar on
the street. The two former tailors are nearly unrecognizable because of their filth, and dont appear to recall him. They say
Salaam to him, but he doesnt know what to say and walks on. After a few days he commits suicide.
This is Mistrys way of providing a patch of dignity for them they exist from life that can fulfil their aspirations.
Mistry being a diasporic writer and a Parsi is sensitive to the conditions of those who do not belong to the mainstream way
have to struggle twice as hard for what comes with lesser effort to those belonging to the mainstream, marginalized group
are unable to fully comprehend and appreciate the socio-cultural context of the situation in which they are placed. They
people constantly experience fear, alienation, rejection and insecurity. (Raymond, 301)
Thus, one of the major concerns of A Fine Balance is the exploration of the Indian experience through the eyes of
a Diaspora writer. Mistry has a deep insight into Indian reality. This permeates the urban and rural milieu and the political
experiences portrayed the novel. Mistry often juxtaposes history and fiction to create a broad view of life and of individual
struggles.
The way social and political conditions affect the middle class and the marginalized community is highlighted in
this novel. It is crucial to realize that Mistrys portrayal of Hindu culture is not an impartial ethnographic account of Indian
society. He suggests that stark injustices are inherent in the practice of caste. The inhumanity of untouchability is severely
criticized as contributing to an erosion of meaning in the lives of Dukhi, Narayan, Ishvar and Om.
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M. Manikandan

People who are in power were not only the plunderers of wealth but also of the basic rights of the poor ignorant
people. When Narayan wants to exercise his right to vote, realizing the ground reality his father tells his son, you changed
from Chamar to tailor. Be satisfied with that(AFB,143). However, Narayan is steady in his stand and he is for not letting
the blank ballots be filled by the landlords men(AFB,44). In the process of registering his vote, he and two other
Chamars are forcibly gagged, flogged and tortured and killed. Burning coals were held to the three mens genitals, and
then stuffed into their mouths. Their screams were heard through the village until their lips and tongues melted away
(AFB,146).
On the other hand, the untouchable children are very eager to learn like the upper caste children. But they are
punished brutally, beaten up by the teacher. This kind of bold insults show the degree suppression and oppression.
Shameless little donkeys! Off with you or Ill break your bones!...
You Chamaarrascals? Very brave you are getting, daring to enter the
school! He twisted theirears till they yelped with pain and started to
cry. The school children fearfully huddled together. Is this what
your parents teach you? To defile the tools of learning and
knowledge?... Wanted to look! Well, I will show you now! I will
show you the back of my hand! Holding on to Narayan, he slapped
six times in quick succession across the face, then delivered the same
number to his brothers face. (AFB, 109-10)
Then, Mistry cites the upper-caste response of male children from the low castes. Any attempt to vise is
suppressed. Increased vigilance and a more rigorous adherence to the caste system leads to more floggings and beatings.
The lower castes are beaten, tortured and killed for a number of minor offences. Partha Chatterjees comments on caste
may suggest what is at stake in Dukhis refusal to endure hereditary vocation.
The essence of caste, we may say, requires that the labouring bodies
of the impure castes be reproduced in order that they can be
subordinated to the need to maintain the bodies of the pure castes in
their state of purity. All injunctions of dharma must work to this end.
(Chatterjee, 194)
Poor people find it very difficult to survive in this country. They dont have a dwelling place to live. They wander
like beggars in the streets. Ishwar and Om represent thousands of the homeless people in our country. When their huts are
destroyed due to the Slum Evacuation Programme, they stuff all the belongings in a trunk and, sinking under its weight,
go all over the city in search of a place to live in. They realize that even to sleep on a pavement which too is not permanent.
They must pay the policeman. Both of them are picked up by the police from their rented footpath dwelling to work as
construction workers and they are forced into a trunk wherein, stray, gravel stabbed the human cargo. The tailors had to
abandon their work for a number of days for reasons beyond their control. This unmasks the governments indifference
towards the feelings and welfare of poor people.
In this novel, violence against the body takes its most radical form in the compulsory sterilizations. Ishvar and Om
are captured and sterilized by the landlord who is also responsible for the torture and murder of their family. Om is

Impact Factor (JCC): 4.4049

Index Copernicus Value (ICV): 3.0

A Study of Subaltern Suffering in Rohinton Mistrys a Fine Balance

77

castrated on an impulse of the Thakur, while Ishvar suffers the fate of many victims. Ishvars wounds turn septic, then
gangrenous and eventually his legs are removed. The novel spans backwards in time to fill in the earlier life of its
protagonists and their ancestors. Mistry observes the paradox of the desire for explanation and order. All separations are
vain. Such lines are artificial and there are stronger forces at work and if such a line is made to persist it will lead to chaos
or lead to even more problems. Partition was just such a line and history has amply shown this. (Mistry, 17)

CONCLUSIONS
The narrative voice Mistrys fictional discourse achieves in A Fine Balance swings between involvement and
detachment thus provides a reliable witness to an eventful era in the nations history. Mistrys humour is gentle, subdued
and occasionally quite amusing. The way the novel is concluded more than amply demonstrates the values of human
relationships and fellow feeling among people, despite their distinctions in caste and class. His view of life makes for
health and sanity, a need most compellingly felt today more than ever before. He has given the subaltern (the Chamaars) a
voice and visibility in this fine novel.
REFERENCE
1.

Guha, Ranjit. Ed. Subaltern Studies, Vol, VII, Oxford, 1982

2.

Jaydipsinh Dodiya (ed.), The Fiction of Rohinton Mistry: Critical Studies, New Delhi: Sangam Books, 1998

3.

Mistry, Rohinton. A Fine Balance. London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1995

4.

Partha Chatterjee. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1993

5.

Karin, Kapadia. The Violence of Development: The Political Economy of Gender.New Delhi: Macmillan, 2002.

6.

Singh, A.K. Community in the Parsi Novels in English. New Delhi: Creative, 1997.

7.

Williams, Raymond. Realism and Contemporary Novel. The Long Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.

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