Conclusion

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 Topophilia Sentiments in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey.
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,” speakingeither
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 brought him national and international
recognition. It is a socio-political novel which narrates the lifestory 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 acorresponding 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 yearsmarking 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
Sikhbodyguards 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 postcolonial India, Mistry has made sincere effort to
embrace more of the socialreality 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.
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 doubleedged 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 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 Journey from Happiness to Mistry As Depictet in Rohinton Mistry’s
such a Long Journey. Mistry‟s works seeks to evolve a vision that involves both the community
centred 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,
onecan 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-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 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 senseof 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 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, 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
buriedand 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 afaithful 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, 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. 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 Canadian Literature and Indian Writing in
English.