Between Sameness and Difference: Parsis and Other Minorities in Rohinton Mistry's Such a Long Journey

Minority is a group of people who have been thrown out of the main stream by external forces who intrudes in their world with a wish to get their central position. It's not only the numbers which turn a group of people or community into a minority, there are a lot of other factors which decide the position of a group of people as minority or majority. These factors may be economic, social, political, racial or gender based and so on. An individual or a group can be in minority due to being pushed out of the centre towards periphery or are compelled to face the pain of being 'expelled' and outcast from the very beginning. Dalits in India, Indian Muslims and the females at Indian homes come under the minority of this sort. On the other hand there are post colonial elites, members of diasporic communities and other im/migrants who are brought to their minority status during the process of spatial or temporal dislocation and relocation.

Being a member of Parsi diaspora Rohinton Mistry is able to sense the pain of being on the margin which he perfectly portrays in his works. His novel Such a Long Journey deals with the Parsi world in post colonial India, especially during the state of emergency. The novel presents their pain of being expelled from the centre to the margin of social, political and power sphere of post independent India, their disgruntlement against being compelled to remain within this limit and their struggle to regain whatever they have lost. The present paper will endeavour to study and analyze, the above mentioned issues, along with the questions related to identity and ethnicity, presented in the novel not only from the perspective of Persian minority but also other group/s or individual/s presented in the novel as having a marginal position.