Reflection of Contemporary Indian Society in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-533-1_69How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Political turmoil; internal emergency; caste discrimination; margin- alization; social injustice; postcolonial India

Abstract

Rohinton Mistry is a postcolonial writer who was born in 1952. Mistry began his literary career by publishing short stories and fictions in the early 1980s. He published his short stories in Hart House Review and as result re- ceived two Hart House Literary prizes for it in 1985. He has written one collection of short stories, three novels and one novella. The works of Mistry have focused mainly on the lives of the poor and marginalized people who have witnessed hardship due to the rise of industrialization and commercialization in the city of Bombay. A Fine Balance is one of Mistry’s popular novels for which he was awarded with Giller Prize in 1995, Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and also nominated for prestigious Broker Prize. The novel focuses on the inhuman behaviour of man towards another fellow human being belongs to low caste and poor sections of Indian society and indomitability of man. The novel portrays a vibrant picture on the impact of Emergency on the common people declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during her reign. The novel also highlights the issue of casteism prevail in India and how this casteism ruins the lives of common men. This paper is an attempt to explore the postcolonial Indian society during Internal Emergency and look into the predicament of the people and discrimination meted by lower caste people in India as reflected by Rohinton Mistry in his A Fine Balance.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Pranjal Hazarika
AU  - Ajit Konwar
AU  - Chakradhar Deka
AU  - Bijoy Kumar Nath
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/31
TI  - Reflection of Contemporary Indian Society in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart Systems and Social Management (ICSSSM-2 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1133
EP  - 1148
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-533-1_69
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-533-1_69
ID  - Hazarika2025
ER  -