Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

@article{190878,
        author = {Miss. Drashti Joshi},
        title = {Dialogic Transformations: Narrative Voice and Social Inequality in Indian Fiction-to-Film Adaptations},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {},
        volume = {12},
        number = {no},
        pages = {408-413},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=190878},
        abstract = {This paper examines how underdog narratives are revoiced when Indian novels are adapted into films, using Bakhtinian dialogism as its central theoretical framework. Focusing on The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga), Serious Men (Manu Joseph), and Q&A (Vikas Swarup), along with their cinematic adaptations, the study explores how narrative voice, polyphony, and social critique transform in the movement from page to screen. These texts foreground marginalized protagonists whose struggles against caste, class, and systemic inequality are articulated through distinctive narrative voices that challenge dominant social discourses.
Drawing on Bakhtin’s concepts of dialogism, heteroglossia, and polyphony, and integrating insights from narratology and adaptation studies, the paper argues that adaptation operates as a process of narrative revoicing rather than simple reproduction or fidelity. In the novels, the underdog’s resistance is primarily expressed through interior monologue, linguistic plurality, satire, and ironic self-fashioning, allowing marginalized voices to speak directly against structures of power. In contrast, the film adaptations redistribute this dialogic energy through cinematic narration, visual framing, performance, and sound, often reshaping or moderating the critical intensity of the original narrative voice.
The paper demonstrates that these shifts are not merely formal but ideological, reflecting the constraints and possibilities of cinema as well as broader cultural and market considerations. It contributes to Indian literary and film studies by foregrounding Bakhtinian dialogism as a productive framework for understanding narrative transformation, social critique, and the politics of voice across literary and cinematic forms.},
        keywords = {Dialogism, Adaptation Studies, Indian Fiction, Indian Cinema. Underdog Narratives, Bakhtinian Theory, Caste and Class.},
        month = {},
        }