Lives on the Edge: Navigating Subaltern Existence in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance

Abstract

Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance presents the struggles of marginalized individuals living under the intersecting forces of caste, class, gender, poverty, and political oppression. This chapter examines the novel through Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of the subaltern, focusing on how marginalized voices are silenced or denied recognition within dominant social structures. Ishvar and Omprakash, born into the Chamaar caste, experience caste discrimination, labour exploitation, forced sterilization, displacement, and violence, while Dina’s struggles reveal the gendered dimensions of marginality. The novel’s depiction of slums, labour camps, and broken bodies exposes the structural nature of subaltern suffering. At the same time, the shared household briefly creates a space of dignity and solidarity. Through a Spivakian reading, A Fine Balance emerges as a counter-history that preserves the experiences of those erased from dominant narratives, while revealing the continuing limits of subaltern speech.