Nation and Re-Narration: A Post Colonial Reading of Rohinton Mistry’s Novels

Synopsis submitted to Madurai Kamaraj University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English

By S.MARISAMY Reg.No. P 4825

Under the Guidance and Supervision of Dr. M.P.GANESAN M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Assistant Professor of English Sourashtra College, Madurai

MADURAI KAMARAJ UNIVERSITY (University with Potential for Excellence) MADURAI – 625021

SEPTEMBER 2019 1

SYNOPSIS Nation and Re-Narration: A Post Colonial Reading of

Rohinton Mistry’s Novels

Indian Writing in English holds a unique identity in the world of English literature. Early Indian writers like , Rabindranath Tagore, Dhan

Gopal Mukerji, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand used

English without the influence of mother tongue to convey an experience that was essentially Indian, They were followed by the significant novelists like

Kamala Markandaya, Manohar Malgonkar, Anita Desai and Nayantara Sahgal who captured the spirit of an independent India and established a unique identity.

The middle of twentieth century Indian Writing in English witnessed the emergence of poets such as Nissim Ezekiel, P. Lal, A.K. Ramanujan and Dom

Mores, and writers like Salman Rushdie, V. S. Naipaul, Arundhati Roy,

Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai and Aravind Adiga. The writers live either in India or abroad, but continue to enrich through their writings.

These writers have written on a variety of themes which include independent struggle, problems of the oppressed, gender differences, social issues like caste discrimination, economic inequality, political oppression, ecological issues and so on. All such themes are well documented in various literary genres like poetry, drama, short stories, novel, novella and non-fiction. 2

Literature of the Indian Diaspora is a significant division in Indian

Literature in English which is gaining importance day by day. It is important to know the origin of Indian diaspora to understand the nature of diasporic literature. The postcolonial and academic diaspora has its own representative writers in the North America such as Rohinton Mistry, Vikram Chandra and

Bharati Mukherjee.

Diasporic writers suffer from severe identity bewilderment and alienation from homelands. Thus, the writers of this kind show an intense desire to assimilate and belong to their present place of abode. This is reflected in the literature they produce. Diasporic Indians like other diasporic people have strong links to their homelands and show a keen yearning to assimilate and a sense of belonging to their present place. This creates counter pulls in the psyche of the diasporic writers and is reflected in the literature they produce.

The modern Parsi face is identified by the literature written by Bapsi Sidhwa,

Farrukh Dhondy, Rohinton Mistry, Firdaus Kanga, Dina Mehta and Boman

Desai. It is not only a part of the resurgence of Indian English Writing but also the display of ethno-religious attributes which was not seen in the writings of colonial Parsi writers.

Rohinton Mistry, the socio-political novelist, has emerged as a significant literary figure during the recent century. Rohinton Mistry was born in on 3rd July 1952 to Behram Mistry and Freny Jhaveri Mistry. He was the second son of the three and he also has a younger sister. Cyrus Mistry, well 3 known playwright and short-story writer, is his younger brother. He did his schooling from Villa Theresa Primary School and then St. Xavier‟s High School.

He graduated from St. Xavier‟s College in Bombay. He completed his degree in

Mathematics in 1974. His craze for music was such that Polydor released an

EP, Ronnie Mistry, on which he sang his own compositions and traditional folk songs.

Later on, he migrated to Canada and there he married to Freny Elavia in

1975. In Canada, , he worked as a clerk in the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. In 1978, Mistry and his wife enrolled for evening courses at the

University of Toronto. He was financed by his bank. He completed his second degree in English Literature and Philosophy in 1982. He wrote his first One Sunday in 1983 and won Hart House Prize for it. Next year he won it second time for Lend Me Your Light. In 1985 Auspicious Occasion won the contributor‟s award of Canadian Fiction. Thus, in 1987 Penguin Canada published his collection of stories entitled Tales from Firozsha Baag and later in

Britain and USA under the title Swimming Lessons and other stories from

Firozsha Baag. It was short-listed for the Canadian Governor General‟s Award.

Mistry published his first novel Such a Long Journey in 1991. It was short- listed for the and The Trillium Award. It won the Governor

General‟s Award, the Smith Books/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the

Commonwealth Writer‟s Prize for the Best book. His second novel A Fine

Balance appeared in 1995. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize once again. It won the Governor General‟s Award once again, the Giller‟s Prize. It also 4 received the Royal Society of Literature‟s Winfred Holtby Prize and the 1996 Los

Angeles Times Award for fiction. Family Matters was published in 2002 and won several award including the seventh annual Kiriyama Prize for literature of the Pacific Rim and the South Asia Subcontinent. It was also shortlisted for the

Booker Prize and IMPAC award.

His fictional world deals with his home metro-polis Bombay. His brother

Cyrus is great influence on his literary career, who advised him to write about his home city as “Bombay is as viable a city for fiction”. His books are re- fashioned from memory. Mistry himself said: “Writers write best about what they know. In the broad sense, as a processing of everything one hears or witnesses, all fiction is autobiographical- imagination ground through the mill of memory. It‟s impossible to separate the two ingredients” (Lambart, The

Guradian).

In 1996, Mistry was awarded an honorary doctorate of the Faculty of Arts at Ottwa University. His main concern in his fictional world is the representation of his microscopic community under the various political phases in India and its subjugation by majority. He portrays the various problems faced by his community in the present time.

Apart from casteism which constitutes a major part, several other issues such as communal riots, politics and corruption are highlighted in the same novel. K.C Belliapppa observes regarding : “Rohinton Mistry‟s second novel, A Fine Balance is a significant landmark in recent Indian Fiction 5 in English. It not only spans a period of about forty years of free India from the time just before India attained freedom to the year 1984, when Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated but is also a work that gives a richly comprehensive account of the goings-on in the country. (201)

Mistry draws his inspiration both from sharply recalled childhood experiences and from the upheavals of migration. Mistry‟s fiction focuses on the Parsi identity. It also indicates how Parsis are learning to cope up with the reality of postcolonial India and how they are coming to terms with their new lives in the west. Like other postcolonial Indian writers, he also uses the form of unconventional narratives and employs anti-realist modes of narration.

Rohinton Mistry conveys his message of shunning exploitation of people to the world through his works. He doesn‟t stop with attacking the social evils in his respective society. He also conveys better solutions to those social inequalities and evils through his writings.

Chapter one “Introduction” traces briefly the history of Indian Writing in

English especially the Indian Fiction in English and fixes Rohinton Mistry in his social, political and literary context. Chapter two titled as “Representation and Resistance” looks into the post-colonial counter-discourses in the novels of

Rohinton Mistry. Resistance literature uses the language of empire to rebut its dominant ideologies. The researcher has explored how adequately the texts represent an indigenous people or how the texts react to the oppressing colonizers. In other words, the colonized nation is “writing back,” speaking 6 either of the oppression and racism of the colonizers or the inherent cultural

“better-ness” of the indigenous people. The four novels selected for exploration, exemplify different aspects of representation with the intention to preserve the ethnic community, highlighting the contradictions inherent in the national imaginary, depicting social contradictions of class, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and language and re-locating the text within its historical and ideological context.

Resistance literature uses the language of empire to refute its dominant ideologies. The researcher explores how adequately the texts represent an indigenous people or how the texts react to the oppressing colonizers. It means, the colonized nations are „writing back,‟ stating either of the repression and racism of the colonizers or the inherent cultural „better-ness‟ of the indigenous people. Mistry foregrounds the alternative history that defies the authorized description of history and exemplifies how the weak and feeble have the potential to resistance.

Mistry‟s first novel Such a Long Journey (1991) brought him national and international recognition. It is a socio-political novel which narrates the life- story of a middle-class Parsi protagonist Gustad Noble against the backdrop of the political events in India during the 1970s. Characters like Gustad,

Dinshawji, Bilimoria, Peerbhoy and the pavement artist are the vehicles of conveying ethnic, communal and to the extent, national consciousness. There is a change in the consciousness of the characters which denotes a 7 corresponding change in the consciousness of the community. Mistry has endeavored to re-think and re-narrate about his community and country through the various narratives woven in the novel.

The main action of A Fine Balance is framed between the opening chapter

Prologue 1975 and the concluding Epilogue 1984. These are important years marking some of the crucial events in the history of the Indian nation: 1975 saw the declaration of a state of Internal Emergency by the Prime Minister Mrs.

Indira Gandhi and in 1984 Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in vengeance for the Indian Army‟s attack earlier that year on the

Golden Temple in Amritsar and the death of their religious leader Jamail

Bhindranwale. With the backdrop of this major political event of the post- colonial India, Mistry has made sincere effort to embrace more of the social reality of India seeking a balance between the ation a social construct and the

Nation-State, a political one. Not the cosmopolitan Bombay alone but he also brings in a typical Indian village and its people and also a remote town located on the northern mountainous region.

In the novel A Fine Balance the upper castes comprising Brahmins and

Rajputs make no attempt to know the Mochis. So they exploit them and finally kill them. The iniquities committed by the upper castes will be brought out in the course of the exposition. Now the Mochis traumatized from childhood become the target of the other and shadow of the upper castes. 8

Mistry has underlined the injustices inherent in the practice of caste and the inhuman nature of untouchability that has eroded meaning from the life of the outcastes. By presenting the tale of three generations of an untouchable family and their struggle for social mobility, this novel deals with the issues of subaltern sections of the society and foregrounds their resistance to the established hierarchies in the postcolonial India.

Apart from the intercultural unity of the powerless, the novels has brought forth their everyday practices as reflecting their resistance against the dominant hegemonic order. These everyday practices and tactics might not be categorized as an obvious forms of resistance but they covertly express their resistance against the coercive forces and enables them to negotiate the power structures. The use of humor by the powerless against the powerful can be seen as a subtle way of verbal resistance.

In Family Matters, Mistry introduces a bed-ridden, retired Parsee English professor, Nariman Vakeel, and makes him symptomatic of the feeble condition of his community. Family Matters is about the imposed patterns and double- edged search for order in the flux at both the individual and the national levels.

Mistry by narrating the stories of poverty and sufferings, has made the subaltern characters his centre of consciousness. He foregrounds an alternative history by presenting the historical events from the point of view of the subaltern and represents the silences of the oppressed groups who are not given voice in the socio-political space of a nation. To bring change in the 9 political and social circumstances and to deliver social justice to the marginalized sections of the society, it is crucial to expose the processes and methods of marginalization as these power tactics compromise the fundamental human need of autonomy and freedom. They undermine the essence of humanity by threatening the selfhood of the oppressed group; therefore, it is unethical not to speak about marginalization.

Chapter three analyses “Re-narration of Country and Community”.

Mistry‟s works seeks to evolve a vision that involves both the community- centered existence of the Parsis and their involvement with the wider national framework. Mistry re-narrates the history of his community and country as it has been in the Post-Independence era. This re-narration of history in a way depicts consciousness of anxieties and aspirations, perils and problems of existence of individual, communal and national issues. In Mistry‟s novels, one can easily find interconnectedness of various themes like theme of nationalism, alienation, oppression, human-relationship, fear and temptation. Mistry in his novels dwells upon the Parsees‟ involvement in tradition and at the same time reveals Parsi individuals and families efforts to compromise in the changing patterns of life.

This reparation of history in a way depicts consciousness of anxieties and aspirations, perils and problems of existence of individual, communal and national issues. Mistry has in this sense, successfully exploited some historical points of post- Independence era and endeavored to re-think them and re- 10 narrate about his group of people and country through the various narratives woven in the novel.

Closely connected to the social and political milieu, Mistry brings forth the issues that are extremely relevant in the day to day life of the common man and they feel a part of it. Subjects like corruption, problematic political decisions, the common man‟s fears and traumas, caste and class problems and many more such pertinent concerns are so well portrayed that people feel intimate and associated. The cultivation of such wonderful socio-cultural essence intermingled with the beauty and artistry of form and language gives the novels of Mistry a perceptive approach in English literature.

In the novel Such a Long Journey Mistry through Gustad‟s mind and memories of past and present, the novel is able to recreate history. This allows the author to question the validity of a history that the State wishes to present or project for the purpose of posterity; a history that is recreated by the majority group or the dominant class or caste; a history that refuses to recognize the presence of minority groups, backward castes and classes, the disabled and women. The novel deals with the Pakistan and Bangladesh war of

1970.

Rohinton Mistry‟s version of history challenges official history. His is the unofficial voice of the people more in tune with the realities of the time.

Throughout his work, he narrates the nation based on his actual perception of reality and illustrates how the “powerless have the potential to narratives the 11 nation. The re-depiction of history in a way portrays attention to nerves and objectives, risks and issues of nearness of individual, open and national issues.

Mistry has, in this sense, viably manhandled some genuine reasons for post-

Independence period and attempted to rethink them and re-portray about his gathering and country through the distinctive stories woven in the novel.

Mistry handles to begin with, in Such a Long Journey, the Bangladeshi war with Pakistan, second, Indira Gandhi‟s disclosure of a State of Emergency which impacts the employment of the tailors of A Fine Balance finally, in

Family Matters, the impact Hindu fundamentalist unsettling influence and the post-Babri Masjid riots had on the life of the standard Indian. Mistry‟s characters and establishment turn round the multi-story of Mumbai. His stories for the most part stress the trials and tribulations of Bombay Parsis.

Nostalgia is a recurrent theme in Mistry‟s fiction that is dealt in chapter four. This nostalgia is generally for a past way of life, forever lost to the main characters. It is occasionally manifested in the idealization of religious rituals which are seen as a way to preserve the past and prevent the disintegration of the family and the community. It also takes the form of reminiscing about childhood which is seen as a more stable and reassuring world than the present. These reminiscences, presented in the stories of various characters in the novels, are linked to the changed circumstances of the Parsi community following Independence. This politico-cultural nostalgia helps to create a sense 12 of loss about the changed circumstances of the characters in both domestic and public spheres.

Mistry assimilates national politics with the main plot of his narrative which is the fate of the subaltern and the minority in the pre and post independent era. A Fine Balance provides a scathing indictment on the power of the elite and the moneyed in which the marginalized and the powerless had no role to play. Most of the marginalized succumbed to the pressure; Avinash is brutally murdered, Maneck committed suicide, Ishvar and Om are forced to undergo sterilization which left them deformed and destituted, Dina lost her much needed independence and self respect. The society presented by Mistry is not an idealized society. Superstition and violence are rampant. Gender inequalities are visible in the fact that sweetmeats were circulated when a male child is born, but no celebration attended the birth of a girl. It is also the site of the repetition of caste-based brutality. The lower castes are beaten to, tortured and killed for trivial reasons. The minorities in India do not look for scaling the skies or economic up gradation but for equality, justice, satisfactory basic needs and coexistence because, “In the end, it‟s all a question of balance”

(Mistry 22).

All of Mistry‟s texts play with the boundaries of the private and the public. Most of Mistry‟s main protagonists, such as Gustad and Yezad, inhabit the two realms simultaneously, while testing the boundaries of both. The public world is the world of the ordinary citizen, consisting of friends, 13 acquaintances and the professional space of work where these adult relationships are forged. The themes of politics, history and community are integral to the life of Mistry‟s characters. The private world is the space of the home and the family, inhabited mostly by women and children.

Mistry chooses to revisit his original home city and culture rather than detail the immigrant experience. Mistry produced Gustad‟s character as a typical Indian father. Indian fathers have dreams about their children but when they fail to fulfill their dreams, they feel frustrated. This is the first trouble that Gustad faces in the novel Such a Long Journey. Mistry illustrates

Parsi community under a variety of political segments in India suffering from the marginal reality. Mistry pointed out different anxieties of the Parsi

Zoroastrian community.

Chapter five reasserts the ethnic identity. Mistry reasserts Parsis values of culture and their attachment to nation building in opposition to those of the dominant culture. Parsis‟ new place and the interaction with the representative culture form the modes of thinking of the diaspora. Mistry draws a human world of sounds and smells, locations and dislocations, colourful speech and cultural mores for reading as resistance in the post-colonial paradigm. Mistry‟s writing thus also becomes a kind of „writing back‟ to a dominant community‟s culture and practices that necessitate a writer‟s commitment and responsibility. Much in the postmodern vein, Mistry seeks to reinvent buried 14 and alternate meanings hagemonised by India‟s master-narratives, to impose a narrative mode of historical and political re-structuring of experience.

In Family Matters individual identity is explored through the family or community identity. It is the tragic story of Nariman Vakeel. He is forcefully separated from his Christian girlfriend by his parents and forced to marry a girl of Parsi community. This is presented as a submission of his will to the higher good: “No happiness is more lasting than the happiness that you get from fulfilling your parents wishes” (FM 13). Mistry aesthetically registers his bold protest against the nexus between Religion and social status.

Mistry clearly emphasizes the need to break barriers that negate unity but at the same time he advocates through the wall of differences the need to assert one‟s cultural or ethnic identity. There is no need to sacrifice the identity in the face of hegemonic forces. In this way Mistry has portrayed various anxieties of the Parsi Zoroastrian community. His portrayal of middle class

Parsi community is a medley of post-colonial predicament of Parsi-Zoroastrian who is sidelined as a minority and „other. At the same time, he highlights the various anxieties of this small ethnic group related with dokhma, prayers, conflict of national identity, recitation of prayers, vulture controversies.

To conclude, Mistry has woven the threads of history into the texture of his novels, and thus his novels are the showcase of history-fiction interface.

The history that Mistry chronicles in his fiction is the contemporary Indian history that moves closer to post-colonial period. In this sense, Mistry is a 15 faithful chronicler of post-colonial Indian history. While re-narrating this history, Mistry has invariably explored the dark sides of Indian politics – both of national politics and of cultural politics which have frequently rocked the very base of post-independent Indian society. In this sense, his novels are great political novels. At the same time, Mistry has emerged as a great culture critic too, because while writing great diaspora literature of Parsi community as well as subaltern ethnic minority.

Mistry has strongly critiqued the ills of Indian culture and society that have never evaded his memory, while still living in Canadian culture and society. Thus, Mistry‟s fiction obviously moves towards interdisciplinary studies. As again a post-colonial author, Mistry seems to interrogate the people of his motherland, „Has colonialism departed with the departure of colonizers or is it the continuation of colonialism and only in a new form? In all his novels, Mistry endeavours to pinpoint answers to these questions.

In postcolonial countries ethnic conflict is accelerated by the leftovers of the colonial policy of divide and rule which privileged members of the English educated minorities like the Ibo in Nigeria, Baganda in Uganda, Parsis in India, and Tutsi in Burundi who were given preference by the colonial rulers. They found themselves facing rising competition and antagonism from the members of other ethnic groups looking for better share in the new government after independence. Mistry like most other Parsi writers takes special care to archive the past of the Parsis in great detail. There is disappointment, frustration, 16 anger and sometimes an indifference with which he handles the certain disappearance of Parsi heroism and greatness of the past.

Thus, one can say that Rohinton Mistry through his Diasporic discourse has well depicted his ancestral background, his community‟s encaged situation in a metropolis like Bombay and his deep attachment with and nostalgia for a world gone by. He is well aware of his community‟s efforts to maintain their cultural identity in the face of the ethnic and religio-cultural attacks in the post-imperial and post-independent India and hence he has meticulously presented it. The politico-cultural nostalgia helps Mistry to create a sense of loss about the changed circumstances of the characters in both domestic and public spheres. Through skilful blending of the characters‟ personal affairs with communal and political matters related to Bombay and India he lends them significance as social beings. Mistry‟s meticulous description makes the readers feel as if they are walking into the streets of Bombay, visiting the houses of Parsi community and experiencing the muddled affairs of Indian politics in postcolonial India.

The research can further be explored in terms of language of Mistry and other Parsi writers. It can also be further researched on a comparative study of various Parsi writers. One can also investigate Rohinton Mistry‟s writings with regard to his influence from and Indian Writing in English.