ABSTRACT

The present study is to assess the issues and perspectives on Dalitism and injustice done to Dalit people in Rohinton Mistry’s novel A Fine Balance. This paper also intends to study the tyrannies of the landlords, officials and politicians on the lower and poor strata of society. The paper also tries to highlight the theme of callousness, brutality and indifference of the high class towards the Dalits and poor. The objective of the paper is to examine and interpret Dalitism and establish the position of the downtrodden or underprivileged class and to etch out the real image of the Dalits oppression during the emergency called by the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. I intend to throw light on the woes and sufferings of the poor Dalits with whom inhuman treatment is meted out and they are considered lower than the animals. Dalit oppression and even annihilation is the key concept of this paper. Horrendous consequences of the Dalit oppression have been projected synoptically in the present study.
…Rohinton Mistry’s novel A Fine Balance is set in Bombay from 1945 to 1984. The novelist portrays the predicament of Chamaars (leather-workers) or untouchables in this novel very tactfully. This novel portrays the story of four characters — Dina Dalal, a Parsi widow who wants to assert her independence, Maneck Kohlah who grapples with problems of his life and two Chamars-turned tailors, Om and Ishvar Darji who migrate from their village to fulfill their parents’ incomplete wishes and to search a good job as the work in the village has dried up. To Dr. Jaydipsinh Dodhiya:

A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry’s one novel is set in mid 1970s India. Mistry’s novel beautifully narrates the story of four unlucky people whose lives come together during a time of political turmoil (Dodhiya, 2004: 15).

In this novel Dalit and poor classes have been under the critical camera and it has been delineated how they had to strive a lot in their life. Chamaar caste and poor panorama of the post-independence India has been portrayed in it. According to Dr. Jaydipsinh Dodhiya, “One of the most remarkable features of Rohinton Mistry’s fiction is that it brilliantly captures the crowded, throbbing life of India. (Dodhiya 2004: 02). The story of the novel revolves around Dukhi Mochi and his descendents. He is considered as untouchable and is forced to do work for the upper caste people. He had to suffer a lot due to caste system of India and the violence done by the upper society. He despised this kind of living and wanted somehow that his sons may not suffer this oppression and tyranny of the upper class. That’s why he and his wife Roopa do not want that their children follow their life of exploitation and suppression. They both have great fear in their minds of this cruel society. That’s why they sent off their two sons Narayan and Ishvar at the age of ten and twelve respectively to learn tailoring to his close Muslim friend named Ashraf Chacha in Bombay city. In such circumstances, “Dukhi Mochi’s decision to turn to his sons to tailors was indeed courageous” (Mistry 109). It becomes talk of the town in the community and people start raising fingers on Dukhi Mochi:

They say that Dukhi dares to break the timeless chain of caste, which high caste people would not like at all (Dodhiya 2004 : 15).

Ashraf Chacha and his wife Mumtaj welcomes these two boys in their home and Ashraf teaches tailoring to Ishvar and Narayan very well and he wanted them to be top-notch tailors of the city. Violence aroused against Muslims in the country when Ishvar was about seventeen years old. Muslims were slaughtered and their homes and shops burned to the ground. Ashraf Chacha and his family were saved by Ishvar and Narayan when the people attack at Ashraf Chacha’s shop and have a possession on it. Ashraf is saved by them and he is indebted to Ishvar and Narayan. Ishvar lives with Ashraf Chacha to help him in his work. He attains maturity and turns a grown up. He does not return to village but sometimes he goes to visit his father. Narayan, after learning the work, goes to the village and opens his tailor shop for the lower castes. His business runs well. He, by dint of his new craftsmanship, eventually builds a house instead of a hut and marries a beautiful girl named Radha. He has a son named Omprakash and two daughters. Narayan is a self-esteemed tailor and he does not work for the upper-castes and often avoids them. Then Mistry highlights the cruelty of politics in this novel. Judith Fetterley writes about the power in politics:

Power is the issue in the politics of literature, as it is in the politics of anything else. To be excluded from a literature that claims to define one’s identity is to experience a peculiar form of powerlessness ( Fetterley 492).

In the week of parliamentary elections, he does not vote for the upper-class. He has revolutionary thoughts to change the system. He says that he will himself vote for his favorite leader and he does not follow their rules that low-caste people will give just their fingerprints as a proof of voting and upper caste people will fill in the ballots according to their choice. Narayan rebels against the system and he confronts the upperclassman, Thakur Dharamsi, who fixes the votes. Thakur gets furious at this. He and his henchmen take Narayan and two other compliances to his flat where they are hung on a banyan tree with their ankles tied to a rope. They are made naked and thought the day, at intervals; they are being flogged mercilessly on their inverted faces. In the evening when election is over, burning coals are held up in their genitals and then are stuffed into their mouths. They cry and their screams are heard in the village but nobody dares to rescue them as they all fear from Thakur Dharamsi. They cry until their tongues and lips melt away. After that their silent bodies are taken down from the tree but their bodies have little movement. Then they kill them all by transferring their ropes from their ankles to necks. On this cruel and heinous act Bama writes:

Are we not human beings? Do they not have common sense? Do they not have such attributes as a sense of honour and self-respect? Are they without any wisdom, banality, dignity? What do we lack (Bama 24)?

Thakur is not satisfied only with this; he orders his men to bring all of the members of Narayan’s family and burns them alive. Their dead bodies are displayed in the village square of the Dalits to show terror of the Thakur and so that anybody else may not dare to raise voice against Thakur Dharamsi. Their dead bodies are dispersed into the river. Ishvar and Ashraf Chacha are shocked at this news. They come from the city and lodge an F.I.R. against Thakur Dharamsi in the police station. But inspector does not take any action on the charge of arson and murder rather he scolds them:

What kind of rascality is this? Trying to fill up the F.I.R. with lies? You filth achoot caste are always out to make trouble! Get out before we charge you with public Mischief (Mistry 172).

On the other hand, his brother Omprakash Darji lives with Ashraf Chacha after that he is hired by Dina Dalal for tailoring. Dina Shroff, later known in the novel as Dina Dalal when married to Rustom Dalal, is from a traditionally wealthy family. Her father was a doctor but he died when she was only twelve years old. Her mother was withdrawn and unable to take care of Dina after her father’s death. Now her brother Nussawan is at home for him. But Nussawan does not behave well with Dina and abuses her also. He forces her to do household work, cooking, cleaning and all. He bans her school-going and hits her also when she misbehaves. He is, once, on the verge of molesting her just because she gets her hair cut without his permission. Dina rebels against Nussawan, his brother and his brother’s prospective suitors for her when she grows young. She finds her own husband, Rustom Dalal herself at a theater. Nussawan and his wife Ruby were happy to get rid of Dina when she marries with Rustom so that now she will move to his flat. Dina and Rustom are also happy after marriage but their happiness is short-lived and only after three years of her marriage, one day Rustom dies accidentally after hitting by a bus. Now Dina in her early forties and has no way to live her life. She does not want remarry or return to her brother’s house again. To make both ends meet, she becomes a tailor under the guidance of Rustom’s surrogate parents. But her eyesight gives out from complicated embroidery work and she has to quit this work. She is once again jobless. By a lady’s advice she starts working in a company called Au Revoir Exports, who bought ready-made dresses in Au Revoir patterns. Then she prepares dressed for this company and the company pays her for it. As she has poor eyesight, she has to hire tailors for this work. Dina hires, Maneck Kohlah, the paying boarder; the son of a Parsi school chum, and these two Chamaar tailors, Ishvar and Omprakash Darji, to sew dresses for her. At first she does not socialize with them but gradually she allows them to sleep on the terrace of her flat. On the first day of their work Ishvar asks, “Dinabai, what is this Emergency we hear about?” “Government problems – games played by people in power. It doesn’t affect ordinary people like us”, replied Dinabai.

“That is what I said”, murmured Omprakash. “My uncle was simply worrying” (Mistry 88).

Each of these four main protagonists individually lives life like a refugee. They are four members from different class and status yet they start living in Dina’s rented flat like a family. These four strangers now come closer to one another and initially start sharing their stories and then they share their meals and living space also. In this one shabby little apartment, they spend their happiest moments together:

The four of them cooked together and ate together, shared the cleaning and washing and shopping and laughing and worrying? That they cared about her and gave her more respect than she had received from some of her own relatives? That she had, during these last few months, known what a family was (Mistry 550).

If one personally peeps into about their personal life, it is full of sorrows and sufferings. Both the tailors, Ishvar and Omprakash are highly dissatisfied from their destiny. Omprakash is only seventeen years old and he is son of his murdered brother, Narayan. Ishvar is in his early forties and he still unmarried. He becomes the father-protector of his nephew Omprakash after the tragedy of mass murder in their family by the Thakur. They live their life in utter poverty. They take even the sewing machines on rent and do stitching. They are victims of caste and communal violence of the upper class in their village and finally, from the institutional violence of Indira Gandhi’s emergency rule. Their life is a series of unending misfortunes. Each time they are beaten down, they have to pick themselves up and start over. This happens every time in their life. At the occasion of Om’s marriage, Om and Ishvar go to their village. Maneck also returns home to leave for Dubai. Om and Ishvar’s arrival to village proves unlucky for them. Om is castrated by the politicians when he challenges oppressive Thakur who had murdered his whole family. Ishvar had to lose his legs due to gangrene as he was also sterilized under the central government’s Family Planning Program. When they find life difficult here, they return to Dina Dalal in the city but here too shocking news was waiting for them. Dina has now lost her flat in the battle with the landlord. She thinks that both the tailors and Maneck have deserted her. When they three return to their village, Dina feels again very lonely but now she has also lost his rented flat. When Om and Ishvar return to city back, they find themselves homeless without Dina who has given them shelter and job previous time. They end up as pavement dwellers, footpath sleepers and even beggars. When Maneck returns from Dubai after eight years to attend his father’s funeral, he curses God to see the whole situation changed. He finds that Dina has been evicted from her brother. He was feeling sad at this. He is further perturbed to see the most horrifying scene he has never dreamed. He even could not see Ishvar and Om handicapped and working as beggars. Though he casts a glance on them but he refuses to recognize them and annihilates himself by throwing himself in front of a moving train. It is culmination of these series of staggering events of his own life and his near and dear ones that drives him to annihilate himself. Thus, the opening of the book is with the stopping of train service by the death of an unidentified person. According to Jaydipsinh Dodhiya,“The closing of the book with the similar stoppage of train service due to suicide by one of the young aspiring characters whose dreams of India are shattered so badly that he decides to commit suicide” (Dodhiya 66). In this novel Mistry intends to project the image of a middle class man’s struggle to live life and surrender himself to strike ‘a fine balance between hope and despair’. The novel ends with a sad note on Dalitism, poverty and beggary when readers see old Dina Dalal feeding Ishvar and Om without the knowledge of her brother Nussawan and his wife, Ruby with whom she now has to live again.

Thus, it is clear from all that various themes like untouchability, nationalism, identity, oppression, human-relationship and tyranny is major concern of Mistry’s A Fine Balance where two Dalit persons, Om and Ishvar’s dreams of city life shatter who migrate to city in the hope of a nice work and bright future. But here they find many people in the line of unemployment who are looking for jobs. Once after coming to city, they had to sleep under the awning of the shop of Ashraf Chacha’s suspicious friend, Nawaz. Their living in the slum quarters and the devastating and horrendous experiences of the poor city migrants, who chose cities to earn their livelihood, shows them the real picture of lower class city life. They had to cope with the dirt, filth, poverty and unemployment in these slums. Water shortage and other problems of the dire poverty also are faced by them. Ishvar and Om were made homeless by the Central Government’s City Beautification Project endorsed by Nussawan Shroff and Mrs. Gupta. Mrs. Gupta, a rich lady enjoying every comfort of life and she does not want to improve the condition of poor. She favors the emergency called by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and thinks that “The Emergency is a good medicine for the nation” (Rohinton Mistry 583). Mrs. Gupta is absolutely indifferent and rather callous towards the sorrows and miseries of these lower class people. Thus bulldozing of the slums and forcing the roofless poor to pass their nights on pavements or railway platforms is the result of these programs. Man like Ishvar and Om have to carry their things in boxes or bundles every day to their places of work. When a party worker tells this to men and women, the reply is very satirical:

“The Prime Minister’s message is that she is your servant, and wants to help you; she wants to hear things from your own lips”.

“If she is our servant, tell her to come here!” Someone shouted (Rohinton Mistry 52).

Untouchability and tyranny is deeply rooted in the village communities in India. One of the villagers rightly says in the novel, “Government passes new laws, says no more untouchability, yet everything is the same. The upper-caste bastards still treat us worse than animals” (Mistry 142).Though many new laws regarding untouchability have been passed by the government, nothing has changed. The exploitation of the low-castes by upper-castes still continues unabated. Jaydipsinh Dodhiya contents about the exploitation of this Dalit woman, Roopa:

Dukhi Mochi’s wife Roopa stands for docility and tolerance. Her shameful exploitation by the watchman of the rich man’s orchard is Rohinton Mistry’s harsh comment on the double standards prevailing in the contemporary Indian society in the form of untouchability (Jaydipsinh Dodhiya 75).

Women don’t have liberated atmosphere in Dalit communities. Dalit women are exploited by the Jamindars and Thakurs to satisfy their bodily desires. Like these Dalit women are victimized by the high class people, Black women also remained oppressed as Bobbi Sykes writes:

Burdened down with the complexities of bringing up children in this sophisticated and complicated society, she remains an object of sexual fulfillment for the white man, and an ‘invisible’ woman to her white female contemporaries, especially, the ‘establishment’ of women’s liberationists who chatter on about sexual oppression and the competitive orgasm, and who spare not a thought for the true object of sexual oppression in this country today” ( Bobbi Sykes 313-21).

Thakur Dharamsi is a political character in the novel. He is a symbol of tyranny, exploitation and injustice. People like him flourished a lot at the time of the Emergency. Ratna Shiela Mani says about the misuse of power and position by the political leaders and it results in many problems for the ruling class especially Dalits in the novel:

The upper caste leaders connive with the bureaucracy to preserve their interests during the Emergency. Thakur Dharamsi achieves respectability as a political leader because he organizes many sterilization camps. His cruel misuse of power indicates the beginning of the trend of criminalization of politics and politicization of crime (Shiela Mani 207).

Another Dalit woman, Buddu’s wife refuses to go to the field with the zamindar’s son and it brings very dire results for her). K. Ratna Shiela Mani contends about the cast system in India, “The lives of the tailor’s forefathers reflect the tyranny of the caste system in rural India where unimaginable horrors are perpetrated on lower caste…” (Shiela Mani 192).

Through Vasantrao Valmiki’s character Mistry projects the significance of the title A Fine Balance. His message of hope and despair puts life in this novel at the traumatic time of Emergency:

There is always hope —hop e enough to balance our despair. Or we would be lost. After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life (Mistry 652).

The novelist drives home the point that Emergency proved helpful to the political leaders and it did not affect the lives of the poor. For the Dalits and poor, each day is an Emergency and a challenge:

Of course, for ordinary people nothing has changed. Government still keeps breaking poor people’s homes and jhopadpattis. Living each day is to face one emergency or another (Mistry 581).

Conclusively, it can be said that, Dalit oppression, centuries after, continues and will continue because poor Dalits have no power to face the situations boldly. Therefore, these people are mostly exploited and suppressed due to their minority and lack of unity. All Dalits should oppose the caste system and the racial prejudices. Despite of government efforts nothing much has been changed in Indian villages till date. It is due to lack of Dalit integrity and solidarity. The unity and awareness of Dalits can bring revolution in their lives and change their situation to the core. Bama also opines:

A hundred times a second there are scuffles among them. Shameless fellows. Of course the upper-caste men will laugh at them. Instead of unity together in a village of many castes, if they keep challenging each other to fights, what will happen to all these men in the end (Bama 41)?

References

• Bobbi, Sykes. ‘Black Women in Australia: A History’ in Jan Mercer ed. The Other Half Women in Australian Society. Penguin: Ringwood, 1975. Print.
• Fetterley, Judith. “Introduction: On the Politics of Literature” The Resisting Reader, rpt. In Feminism, 1977. Print.
• Mistry, Rohinton. A Fine Balance. London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1996. Print.
• Bama. Karruku. Trans. from Tamil Lakshmi Holmstrom. Chennai: Macmillan India Ltd, 2000. Print.
• K., Ratna Shiela Mani. Moral Dimension in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. Parsi Fiction Edition. Novy Kapadia, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2001. Print.
• Dodhiya, Jaydipsinh. Novels of Rohinton Mistry: Critical Study. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2004. Print.
• Dodhiya, Jaydipsinh K. Perspectives on the Novels of Rohinton Mistry. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2006. Print.