Subaltern Consciousness In Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance

Abstract

Post colonialism deals with the cultural heritage of colonialism and imperialism which mainly exposes the exploitation of colonized people and their lands and brings out the upshots of the unfair treatment under the control of the colonisers. The post colonial theory analyses the culture, history, literature and discourse. The postmodern novelists deal with a variety of themes by blending history, fancy and reality. The unexplored world of the a subaltern is presented realistically by writers like Mahasweta Devi, Bama, Aravind Adiga and Rohinton Mistry. Internationally acknowledged Post Colonial writer, Rohinton Mistry is an Indian born Canadian. His writings deal with the downtrodden exploitation by the political injustices, economic imbalances and societal stereotypes. Though he belongs to a Parsi community, he focuses mainly on the plight of the untouchables who are treated inhumanely by the dominant class in this novel, A Fine Balance (1995). The novel deals with several issues like the quest for identity, conflict between the oppressed and the oppressor, political injustices, economic imbalances and loneliness. The most striking and prominent theme is exploitation of the lower caste people by the upper caste. The aim of this paper is to bring out the subaltern consciousness in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance and thereby make the society to realise, empathise and live in harmony with one another.