The Panoptic and the Carceral: Contextualising Rohinton Mistry and Co-textualising Indian History

Abstract

This is a new historicist practice upon the novels written by the Indian-born Canadian author Rohinton Mistry. The textuality of Mistrys texts and the contextuality of Indian history are analyzed to discover the patterns of exchange that happen between them.The texts include the novels A Fine Balance, Family Matters, and Such a Long Journey. The context is Indian historyespecially the period of the Emergency. Mistrys text is read as a product of its time and productive in its time. Indian history is understood not as a context but as a co-text. The Foucauldian conception regarding the panopticon and the carceral patterns of the power structures have framed this study wherein the system of Varna in India and the time of the Emergency are analysed. The structurality of the Varna system in India is analysed as panoptic surveillance. The period of the Emergency that was declared by Indira Gandhi is proposed as a site of a carceral mechanism involving mass incarceration. Effort is made to understand how individuals internalise their subjugation under the exercise of power by the oppressor and accordingly shape their behavioural codes.