Diasporic Consciousness in Mistry’s A Fine Balance and Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children
Dr. Priyanka Singla
Associate Professor
Department of English
Government College for Women
Hisar, Haryana, India
Abstract:
Though the writer’s individual talent should
be rooted in the tradition of a particular society and culture, the real
strength of the modern literary imagination lies in the individual’s response
in terms of belongingness, immigration, expatriation, exile and his/her quest
for identity. The diasporic experiences of various writers of diaspora are
bound to be different from each other. The scope of finding contrast is always
there as the place of their origin does not bridge the gap between ‘home’- the
culture of origin and ‘world’- the culture of adoption. Rohinton Mistry’s
fiction is rooted in the streets of Bombay, the city he left behind for Canada
at the age of twenty-three. The imaginary homeland becomes the literary capital
for almost all the Indian diasporic writers. The image of Bombay has inevitably
led to comparison of Rohinton Mistry with Salman Rushdie, another Bombay born
author settled abroad. However, the differences between these two authors are
as compelling as their similarities. Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Mistry’s
A Fine Balance, both of which are set in Bombay during the administration of
Indira Gandhi and state of Internal Emergency. In the preset study, these two
authors are compared on the basis of their different adopted lands leading to
different diasporic consciousness. Even their view and attitude towards their
homeland is forced to be different as Rushdie’s novel centered around Muslim
middle- class while Mistry seems more at home among the Parsi community. Beyond
such differences, however, there are certain similarities between these two
novelists and their works. Both the novels have a tendency to collapse the
distinctions between public and private worlds. In the present discussion, an
attempt has been made to understand and analyze both Rushdie and Mistry’s
diasporic consciousness as prominent writer of South Asian Diaspora.
Keywords: Diasporic Consciousness, Multiculturalism,
South Asian Diaspora, Imaginary Homelands.
The word ‘diaspora’ means the dispersion of the Jews among the Gentiles
after the period of their exile. Nearly every Indian writer- or writer of
Indian origin in English- seems to have decided that the object of his or her
imagination has to be the mother country. Jasbir Jain rightly points out that
the diaspora has the “ambiguous status of being both an ambassador and a
refugee” (11). The dilemma between the two is the typical struggle of a
diasporic writer. They do not bother about the geographic borders of the nation
state, rather the cultural borders perceived by most diasporic writers are
quite understandably drawn along national lines. In a world without nation-
states, these writers would have merged with others who deal with cultural
confrontations of’ all kinds. But diaspora literature focuses on cultural
states that are defined by immigration counters and stamps on one’s passport.
The diasporic community in world literature is quite varied and complex. It has
shown a great mobility and adaptability as it has often been involved in a
double act of migration from India to West Indies and from there to Africa and
then to Europe or America in search of stability. To deal with this kind of
double, triple diaspora, the meetings of disparate cultures occur on various
geographic levels: village- city, city- city, country- country. For the writers
of ‘diaspora literature’ however, cultural rendezvous are restricted to those
between countries. This is because the author are themselves dislocated along
national lines. According to Bhilu Parekh, the diasporic Indian is like “the
banyan tree, the traditional symbol of the Indian way of life, he spreads out
his roots in several soils drawing nourishment from one when the rest dry up.
Far from being homeless, he has several homes, that is the only way he has
increasingly come to feel at home in the world” (106).
The Indian diaspora is varied at its core.
The branches of this banyan tree reached far off countries like United States,
Canada, Britain, Africa, Caribbean, South America and Australia. The well-known
among these are V. S. Naipaul, Rohinton Mistry, Bharati Mukherjee, M.G.
Vassanji, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Geeta Mehta, Jhumpa Lahiri, Himani
Banerji, Suniti Namjoshi, Uma Parmeswaran, and Neil Bisoondath. They treat
India as their homeland but because of their different adopted lands, their
consciousness as a diasporic writer is also different and gets its reflection
in their work. But at the same time the Indian diaspora in general has a common
concern to have a homeland of one’s own. To analyse a work of art on the basis
of different geographic surroundings is no more an important issue because for
various historical and economic reasons the postmodern literature has gone
global. Any new book from writers like Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Bharati
Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri and V. S. Naipaul makes a big news. But these
diasporic writers continue to be hung up on their national identities even if
they do not sometimes admit it to themselves. The odd feature of diasporic
literature lies in its continued projection of the writer’s motherland, its
culture and history. For this speciality, the west finds colourful cultural
ethnic shades in the diasporic writings. Most Indian diasporic writers seem to
set their works in India and not in the adopted land. However, in view of the
importance of geographical and historical space of any country in which the
writer lives, the different consciousness of diasporic literature in terms of
adopted land could not be ignored while it is difficult to decide which came
first- the consciousness for the surroundings or the natural bent of writing.
Writing set in the present setting is more natural. The Indian diaspora writers
give expression to difficult voices as per their different immigrant
experiences and realities of their new homeland.
Living in diaspora means living in forced or
voluntary exile and living in exile usually leads to severe identity confusion
and problems of identification with the alienation from the old and new
cultures and homelands. Uma Parmeswaran observes this making of a Diaspora
consciousness in four phases:
There are four phases of immigrant settlement
that are true both at the individual and the collective levels: the first is
one of nostalgia for the homeland left behind mingled with fear in a strange land.
The second is a phase in which one is so busy adjusting to the new environment
that there is little creative output. The third phase is when immigrants start
taking part in the shaping of Diaspora existence by involving themselves in
ethno- cultural issues. The fourth is when they have ‘arrived’ and start
participating in the larger world of politics and national issues (22).
However, this obvious development in one’s consciousness depends upon
the cultures one lives in. The diasporic person is at home neither in west nor
in India and thus ‘unhomed’ in the most essential sense of the term.
Salman Rushdie and Rohinton Mistry are two
diasporic writers having the same origin with two different new homelands.
Living in two different alien societies makes their writing fundamentally
different even when they are treating the same theme. Rushdie has put the
dilemma of diaspora in Imaginary
Homelands that the position of the exile or immigrant is one of ‘profound
uncertainties’. ‘To be unhomed is not to be homeless ‘as Homi K. Bhabha has
pointed out in The Location of Culture. When
the immigrant realises his homelessness, the world around him confined and
squeezed and enlarged slowly afterwards. The unhomely moment of personal and
collective consciousness disconnects one’s political existence. The personal
and collective psychic trauma to the disconnected political existence is
clearly evident in the writings of Rohinton Mistry. As Indians who now live and
write from Canada and United Kingdom, Rohinton Mistry and Salman Rushdie are
the writers of the Indian diaspora. Mistry is a Parsi Zoroastrian and his
ancestors were forced into exile by the Islamic conquest of Iran; he was in
diaspora even in India. This kind of multiple displacement is reflected in his
writing. His first novel Such a Long
Journey is prefaced with three epigraphs that evoke a mystical quest motif
like that of the Holy Grail. The Parsis’ quest for their roots, their past,
their heritage is established even before the text itself begins. The first epigraph
is from Firdausi’s Shah Nama, the
second from T. S. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi” and the third from Rabindra
Nath Tagore’s Gitanjali. The lines
from the Shah Nama recall the Persian
imperial past of the Zoroastrian Parsi community to which Mistry belongs. The
two other quotations concentrate on the continuous journey that is dominant in
the identity crisis of diasporic consciousness. On the other hand, Salman
Rushdie belongs to Muslim community of India and was born on 20 June, 1947, two
months before India got independence. This dilemma of being born in the
midnight always shows his inclination towards Pakistan and obvious reluctance
for India’s secular fiber. His choice for his new homeland, Britain, also seems
quite obvious when he says in Imaginary
Homelands: “I grew up with an intimate knowledge of, and even a sense of
friendship with a certain kind of England; a dream England…I wanted to come to
England. I couldn’t wait. And to be fair, England has done all right by me”
(18).
In view of the writings of these two
diasporic writers and their different diasporic consciousness, the two novels A Fine Balance of Rohinton Mistry and Midnight’s Children of Salman Rushdie
have been taken up for analysis in the present study. India is viewed
differently by them. The image of India has different shades and colours in the
two novels. This paper aims to looking closely at these two novels to discover
the image of India in the mind of two diasporic writers who have opted for two
different new homelands. Rushdie’s Booker Prize winning book Midnight’s Children and Mistry’s A Fine Balance deal with the same
central theme- the Emergency excesses of Indira Gandhi. The Emergency saw the
suspension of the basic fundamental rights guaranteed to every citizen by the
Constitution of India. It was first to crush the opposition. Opposition and
criticism are what all democratic governments have to contend with and crushing
them means jeopardising the very foundations of the democracy. This is exactly
what happened during the Emergency and for the very first time since India had
been decolonised in 1947, democratic institutions were suspended; what followed
was one of the most inglorious chapters in the Independent India’s history.
Mistry’s A Fine Balance records this dark and shameful episode with unrelenting
honesty. In an interview soon after the publication of this novel, Mistry
stated, “It seemed to me that 1975, the year of Emergency would be the next
important year, if one was preparing a list of important dates in Indian
history. And so it was 1975” (19).
Both the novels open with a reference to
Bombay. The first few lines of Midnight’s
Children make the intention of the writer crystal clear:
I was born in the city of Bombay. . . once
upon a time. No, that won’t do, there’s no getting away from the date: I was
born in Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home on August 15th, 1947. And the
time? The time matters too. . . On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact.
Clock hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came. Oh, spell it out
spell it out: at the precise instant of India’s arrival at Independence (9).
A Fine Balance is also a text in which Mistry has made a
conscious effort to embrace more of the social reality of India. Although the
novel opens with a Parsi woman- Dina Dalal’s story in Bombay, it soon enlarges
its scope to include her lodger Maneck Kohlah from a hill station in North
India and her tailors, Ishwar and Om Prakash who came to her from a village.
The primary setting is Bombay ‘the dream city’ under the Emergency rule of
1975-77. In a flashback, the narration moves to faraway villages and towns,
before, during and after Partition. The focus is on the Parsi community and the
novel is considerably infected with what Saleem Sinai in the other great novel of
the Emergency calls “an Indian disease, this urge to encapsulate the whole of
reality” (94). As a novel, A Fine Balance
centers on the four main characters: two middle-class Parsis and two Hindu
untouchables. In Midnight’s Children,
the hero Saleem Sinai is from minority community. Apart from the major
characters from the Parsi and Muslim communities, scores of minor and middle
characters comprise a varied social spectrum of mini India in both the novels:
Muslim rent- collectors and tailors, doctors, lawyers, beggars, murderous
strongmen, corrupt slumlords, police, radical students and above all the
dominating appearances of Indira Gandhi herself.
Midnight’s
Children is built almost
entirely on such episodes from the fall of the British Empire to that of Indira
Gandhi’s Emergency rule in India. The beauty of the narration and the
presentation of these events is marvellous: either it is the death of Mian
Abdullah the Hummingbird or Dr. Narlikar’s death in mob violence. Apart from
Bombay, the cities like Srinagar, Amritsar, Delhi, Karachi, Dhaka and others
make their appearance in the most dynamic manner. The image of India is
depicted in its social and political reality. Saleem Sinai remembers not only
the Bombay of his childhood but is even able to comment on each and every event
that is socially, politically and culturally relevant. He can comment on the
state’s Reorganisation Committee that submitted its report of Nehru in October
1955. India had been divided anew into fourteen states and six centrally administered
territories. But, after independence, Saleem feels that “language divided us:
Kerala was for speakers of Malayalam . . . in Karnataka you were supposed to
speak Kanarere” (225). He also remembers the election of 1957. Murder,
politics, elections, businessmen are all presented in the life- size manner.
India becomes the central stage and all major and minor characters appear and
disappear in order to make a real social and political collage of India. The
description of the Bombay city is in fact the ‘imaginary homeland’ of Rushdie.
With the progress of the story, the progress of the Indian struggle for
Independence is also seen.
The history of India from 1919 to 1947is thus
encapsulated, here in the form of the first book, out of the three books. The next
book narrates the steady progress of Saleem Sinai, the bastard child of a Hindu
mother and a British father. That speaks about the Indian history also.
Politics, economy and society in India can be said to have had the similar
progress. The language riots, the rising threat of communism to the Congress
Party, the deteriorating influence of Congress, trials, elections, films- all
of them find their way into the pages of the novel. But the writer leaves India
and travels along with the members of the family to Karachi. The war between
India and Pakistan takes place. Saleem Sinai is the most miserable victim. He
has to discontinue his favourite job of eve- teasing and women- hunting. He
loses his consciousness because of an Indian air- raid on Karachi. He comes
back to consciousness to realise that the sole purpose of the war was to
destroy his family completely. He says, “one by one the war eliminated my
drained, hopeless family from earth” (411). Book third of the novel is a
totally different book. It seems not a part of the main novel. In the first two
parts, despite many difficulties and hurdles, the growth of Indian democracy is
shown but the last part shows the ugly side for Indian democracy. Development
is no more a priority of Mrs. Indira Gandhi. Nehru and Shastri become
irrelevant. ‘India is Indira and Indira is India’. The Bangladesh war takes
place. Saleem Sinai by this time is completely a sub- human creature. He is a
leader of a canine unit. His extraordinary telepathic progress is replaced by olfactory
sense. The Pakistani government is clever enough to ‘utilise’ these talents of
Saleem Sinai in order to find out and smell out Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Saleem
has forgotten everything about his past, including his name. He is called the
‘Buddha’ because he has calm and quietness on his facial expression. He does
his job sincerely. But, he misses his way on the Bay of Bengal and enters into
the Sunderban Delta. A strange and wonderful event takes place. A snake bites
him and he comes to his senses. This is like any other Bombay Hindi film.
Suddenly, he realises his duty and whereabouts. He returns to Dhaka. He sees
the arrival of the Indian soldiers, accompanied by a musical band and
musicians. Parvarti- the- witch, one of the Midnight’s Children, recognises him
and she takes him along with her back to Delhi, hidden in her magic basket.
Now the ugly and dirty side of Indian
politics is shown by Rushdie. Saleem is again back to India. The scene is
shifted to the slums of Delhi. Like Bombay, Delhi is not the ‘imaginary
homeland’ of Rushdie. It is a political slum for him. Saleem’s marriage with
Parvati- the- witch takes place. Mrs. Indira Gandhi has learnt about the
children with miraculous gifts. She orders the arrest of all of them. Saleem is
the first to be arrested and because of the torture of the police, he gives the
list of remaining 580 children as out of the 1001 children, 420 were already
dead because of diseases, famines, strikes and all other disasters. All of them
are taken to tubectomy- sections and made impotent. Parvati-the- witch thinks
it an honour to visit Shiva, the war hero, secretly and thus to conceive a
child during the Emergency. But even that isolated life of poverty and misery
in the slums is thought to be a luxury by Sanjay Gandhi and he is jealous of
those slum- dwellers. The road-rollers, tractors and bulldozers level the slums
with the ground. Again, Saleem turns to his ‘imaginary homeland’ Bombay. He is
not alone here; from Delhi he has taken with him his son Ganesh- born of Shiva,
the war hero and Parvati- the- witch. Parvati dies while giving birth to a
child. Ganesh does not speak. In Bombay he has a good company of Padma, his co-
worker. She finds in Saleem a hope for her sexual desires. Saleem warns her
that he is foreseeing a total disintegration of his body before his thirty-
first birthday. Even his warning cannot stop her from marrying him. Thus, this
natural and unnatural ending gives a kaleidoscopic picture of real India with
its ups and downs. Indian customs, films, mythology, politics, religion, slums,
birth/ marriage/ death ceremonies, friendship, India from Kashmir to Bombay and
the pre- Partition India from Karachi to Dacca with its variety of situations
and shades are shown in the novel.
The main thematic fiber of Midnight’s Children and A Fine Balance is almost the same. The
treatment of their homeland, i.e., India is the original area to provide the
big social spectrum of the country. The street performer Monkey- man, whose
feat of balancing children atop tall poles provides the cover page of A Fine Balance, provides the image of
India that is always being sold to the West; the land of magic and the snake-
charmers. Mistry’s depiction of Emergency turned “everything upside down. Black
can be made white, day turned into night” (372). Goondas, police, family
planning, oppressors and injustice are prominently featured in the novel. The
ugly side of the Indian countryside is also shown effectively. Here the age-
old caste oppressions continue to flourish, though Mistry’s knowledge about
Indian rural life is always in doubt. The experience is second hand. Still,
Mistry succeeds in maintaining a fine balance. It is this fine balance that if
the persons concerned learn to master, helps them to lead a relatively peaceful
happy life. If they fail, their life takes a U- turn. Dina as a young girl, a
married woman, a young widow, constantly upsets the balance of patriarchy and
has to pay for it in her truncated education, her husband’s death, the loss of
her tailors, her home and ultimately her much prized independence. Dina,
however, is a fighter and after every loss of balance, she clambers onto the
knife- edge once again to once more achieve that ever- elusive fine balance.
Maneck too has to learn how to ‘balance’ between the love of his parents, their
mountain home and his need for independence. His sensitive nature fails to
achieve a balance between a serene inner life and the outward turmoil of life
in the city and has to pay for it with his life. Ishvar and Om have to balance
between their own caste origins and their new darji status. There is also a
fine balance in the life of nations and the Indian nation had lost that fine
balance during the Emergency. But Indian democracy had compelled Mrs. Gandhi to
call for fresh elections in which she and her party had been thrown out of
office. The fine balance had ultimately been restored.
What makes Rohinton Mistry different from
Rushdie is perhaps his ability to draw the reader into Emergency time of
crisis. It permits the readers to feel the horrors and the holocaust of it.
Certainly, both the novels have many interesting parallels. The social and the
historical documentation of India, the image of Bombay as a city of social
reality, the ‘Bombayya’ language, and the prophetic comprehensiveness. With the
abstract symbols of Partition, the literal meaning of Indian history becomes
clearer in Mistry. Rushdie’s novel is less directly involving, rather his
description of Partition, Indo-Pak wars and Emergency seemed indirect and translated
by the narrator from some history book. Sometimes, the novel looks like a
scattered and fragmented bundle of dazzling performances, rather than
collection of lives. Rushdie succeeded in sensitising the political event like
the Emergency in Midnight’s Children,
but Mistry’s A Fine Balance is no
less politically charged. It is as engrossing and moving as any other good
novel on Indian historical heritage. Everything- good or bad- finds its due
place in both the novels. India is like this and one has to accept it.
Works Cited
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.
Jain, Jasbir. Ed. Writers of the Indian Diaspora. Rupa, 1998.
Mistry, Rohinton. Such a Long Journey. McClelland and Stewart, 1991.
---. A
Fine Balance. McClelland and Stewart, 1995.
Parekh, Bhiku. “Some Reflections on the
Indian Diaspora”. Journal of Contemporary
Thought. Penguin Publications, 1993.
Parmeswaran, Uma. “Writing the Diaspora”. The Atlantic Literary Review, Vol. 1, 2,
2000.
Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. Jonathan Cape, 1991.
---. Imaginary
Homelands. Granta Books, 1992.