CHAPTER THREE

Myth and Fantasy in Grimus and Midnight’s

Children: Toward Alternative History

134

CHAPTER THREE

Myth and Fantasy in Grimus and Midnight’s Children: Toward

Alternative History

Rushdie‘s main concern is to create a possible alternative history of man.

Subsequently, Grimus is a history-seeking novel and a novel of ―hyperreal reality‖.

He intended it so in order to review the given and designed reality. Likewise,

Midnight’s Children is a palimpsest parodical comment on historical events. It shows

the fictional process behind the stories of history. The two novels develop the idea of

history as narrative and deconstruct the constructed knowledge of history as given

fact. These novels persuade one to give preference to the multiplicity of cultural

influences in the multi-cultural postcolonial world. They do not only acknowledge the

power-structures which shape reality for us, but also affirm the necessity to allow

other, fictional counter-stories to these constructions -- more ethical and respectful

illusions -- to become reality.

As a common theme of the two novels, the stories they contain propose to tell

the always-imperfect truth, and search for alternative view of the historical factual

knowledge. Grimus and Midnight’s Children are both historical fantasies drawing

from historical ―certainties‖ which they undercut, devalue, and deconstruct. Both

novels ultimately present the idea that history is as much fiction as fact. Rushdie

wants to emphasize the fact that as it is presented, history can hide more than it

reveals. The two novels are meant to undermine what has been accepted as history, to

recreate it, and to show that in the presentation of ―truth‖ and ―fact‖ the message is to

convey a meaning and not to re-tell a historical incident. In both novels, his strategy

135

provides a flexibility of narrative knowledge in which the aesthetic, cognitive and

moral are interwoven.

Another major concern of this chapter is to examine Grimus and Midnight’s

Children as alternative narratives of history. In other words, they concentrate on the

―alternative history‖ as a form of historical knowledge. The two novels share the idea

that the society and the individual seek new possible worlds to live in. They seek a

social change and new alternative realities. To achieve this, Rushdie creates new

historical narratives which allow a multiplicity of voices to appear. His novels,

mention, suggest an alternative reality and history to the written ones.

Yet, another objective of the chapter is to discuss the difference between the

historical facts and the fictional narratives through a thorough analysis of the

meanings and values of history. Hans Bertens says, ―Literature is not simply a product

of history, it also actively makes history‖. Bertens also confirms that ―historical texts‖

are viewed as ―literary texts‖ (177). Based on this, Rushdie offers his version of

history as a literary text which inspires the imagination towards an understanding of

new thoughts of treatment. ―History as text‖ enables new critical thoughts of history

because the ―historicity‖ and ―textuality‖ include dynamism of analysis.

Consequently, the chapter acknowledges the new historical perspective. This method

reveals that history is not only a representation of events, but also a dynamic

sociopolitical process that defines the cultural set up of identity. History is not for its

sake; it is for re-evaluation. As a result of this, historical facts themselves are

questionable, and history is narrated to achieve the goal of social change.

It is generally believed that Rushdie has injected a new dimension into

novelists‘ encounter with history, especially in the culture of postmodernism. His

136

work differs from the earlier Indian fiction in that most of the usual ground rules

associated with the order and form of fiction are broken. The unities of time and place

and character are unstable. The narrative fluctuates and the fictional realism is

subverted. Ultimately, as a metafictional writer, he rejects the traditional narrative

model as an utterly inadequate to the task of narrating history.

In fact, he does not say that the novelist plays the role of a historian, but he

definitely suggests that through narrativizing history, the novelist can produce several

similar possible accounts of the given historical knowledge. This extra dimension of

historiographic metafiction is viewed by some critics as the postmodern

representation of history. Thus, the novelist‘s visualization of himself as a historian

who dilates on what history is and how it should be written makes Rushdie an

outstanding fictional writer in the genre. A work is defined as metafiction when it is

inter-textual, self-reflexive and parodies the novelistic conventions by foreshadowing,

foregrounding narrative threads. Based on these views, the postmodernist

representation of history takes on the shape of self-consciousness, fiction takes on the

character of metafiction. Therefore, this form of fiction is reflective of all the

significant trends that stress the fluid relationship between fiction and history. As

Linda Hutcheon remarks, works are dubbed ―historiographic metafictions‖ because of

their conscious self-reflexity and concern with history. Hutcheon argues that

historiographic metafictions are ―novels that are intensely self-reflexive but that also

both re-introduce historical context into metafiction and problematise the entire

question of historical knowledge‖ (Hutcheon, ―The Pastime of Past Time‖ 285-286).

Metafiction emphasizes that all past events are potential historical ―facts‖ but the ones

that become facts are those that are chosen to be narrated. ―Hutcheon, Naracissistic 8)

137

There is consent among readers and critics that the major aim of a novelist is

to make life more meaningful. This is no truer than Rushdie‘s fictional world. The

standpoint for him is that spontaneity is one feature of reality where people express

themselves easily and freely without any kind of dictation. Naturally, people and the

individuals tend to emancipate themselves from the chains of authorities or imposed

ideologies. So, the business of the novelist is the creation and re-creation of

meaningful worlds of life. Rushdie does this because he looks to job of the novelist as

a life-maker and commentator of reality. This supports the idea that the author battles

in two parallel situations: to draw fictional reality and to re-create a new world. The

concept of alternative history has the meaning of creation and re-creation because a

man is a maker of his life and that imagination is a leading force towards new

possibilities on the world of realities.

Here is the brief note of the two novels. Grimus is his first novel which came

out as a debut to his professional fictional career. This novel is commonly described

as a science fiction; a fantasy novel set in an imaginary island beyond the scope of

time and place and as a quest novel based on ideas from mystic poetry. It is pre-fixed

on a twelfth-century mystic narrative poem called, The Conference of the Birds by the

Persian Poet Fariduddin al-Attar in which twenty-nine birds are said to be persuaded

by a hoopoe, a messenger of a bird god, to make a pilgrimage to the god. They set off,

go through valleys, and eventually climb the mountain to meet the god at the top, but

they find that there is no god there; the birds themselves have become the god. The

novel raises philosophical questions about truth.

In the beginning, we come to learn that Flapping Eagle, the central character,

is exiled from ―Axona‖, a name of god as well as the hero‘s native place, because he

―breaks the law of purity‖ and challenges the centralized religious system there. As a

138

result, he is displaced from his origins and thrown onto an island of exiles, Calf

Island. After drinking an alexir, a magical liquid which is supposed to make him

younger and immortal, the Eagle travels through the Mediterranean Sea, searching for

his lost sister and also for new meanings of life. The Eagle was guided by a

philosopher of history, called Virgil Jones into the place of the magician, Grimus.

There, he experiences a new kind of life where people never die. Nevertheless, the

Eagle expresses his feeling of rejection of the new mechanic life which is ruled by

magical elements. He argues with the ruler of the island, Grimus and encourages the

dwellers of Kaf to revolt against the controlled system featured by reason and

rationality. Fed up with its sameness of life in the island, he decides to resurrect the

island without ―Stone Rose‖ and to regain his human nature. In the end, the hero

decides to return to his original national place of Axona with new thoughts and

experience of life.

His second novel, Midnight’s Children, made Rushdie famous overnight.

Unlike the abstract setting and temporal indeterminacy of Grimus, space and time in

Midnight’s Children are sharply focused on the Indian subcontinent between 1915

and 1977. Midnight’s Children is a novel about the textuality of history, replaces the

unitary narrative of official history of India with a comprehensive and highly

subjective versions of the multi – dimensional reality of the sub-continent. Written

against the backdrop of the political upheaval during Indira Gandhi‘s declaration of

Emergency which produces censorship and repression, the novel ultimately aims to

establish the plural values and political freedom as a priori against autocracy and

censorship. His version of history in Midnight’s Children is to deny the

historiographic claims of authentic representation of past. By undercutting the power

of these historical events, the novel grapples with both the Britain‘s power over

139

Indians, along with the Indians attempts to reassert their own power, through

independence, and the consequences of this newly acquired independence. The major

theme of the novel is that history is a textual representation which blurs boundaries of

facts and fiction. The techniques he follows are fantasy, memory and magic realism.

The novel traces the story of Saleem Sinai, the representative of the post- indepndance

generation. Saleem is one of the other ―midnight children‖ who were born in the night

of India‘s Independace and are, after that, frustrated by the socio-political and

historical realities that rendered them hopeless of change and social justice.

Rushdie ascribes the dogmatic, rigid and totalitarian view of history to the

ideology of a dominant center which exerts its forces politically, socially, religiously

and culturally on the marginal ―other‖. This postcolonial perspective continues to

dominate his view of history and historical truth through his work. As a marker of

difference, he treats historical knowledge as a form of master narrative discourse

which attempts to accrue its official status from structure of the center. As a counter-

narrative form, his novels follow the strategy of deconstructive process which avoids

the subversive method mostly adopted by several other postcolonial writers. While

those writers were busy with sorting and pointing out the impact of the colonial

culture on the Indian culture, he sees in the representation of history and re-working

of the historical knowledge a better source for writing back to the colonial, hegemonic

as well as to the totalitarian culture. History for him is the goal and the mean of

culturalization in which the individual is the centre and the main actor.

Accordingly, his treatment of history focuses on the understanding of its

meaning. His novels open up various possible views and meanings of history. His

historical narrative, particularly Grimus and Midnight’s Children, are read as fantastic

renderings of history. They show, in an ironical and satirical touch, how fluid and

140

illusive reality is. It is a ―pickle‘s jar‖, according to Saleem Sinai‘s experience in

Midnight’s Children, which resists fixities and refuses definition. There are some

possible meanings but not intrinsic because the meaning is not final. This is, in fact,

the way that Rushdie represents reality in his novels, cited above. He desires to

represent different, various and possible options of history using the devices of

fantasy, parody and fabulous realism.

Fictionalization of history is the dominating strategy of his early novels,

including Grimus and Midnight’s Children. As a theme, he concentrates on the

thought that can be re-constructed out of a new comprehension of what happened in

the past. To foreground a new view of history, he blends history with fiction. As R C.

Collingwood states, ―For history, the object to be discovered is not the mere event,

but the thought expressed in it. To discover that thought is already to understand it.‖

(The Idea of History 214) Another concern of these novels is the notion of singular

truth in the sense that singularity is treated as an archenemy of the free thought of the

characters. For this reason the novels are meant to debunk the idea of a ―given fact‖

and ―universal truth‖. They establish for a particular and multiple worldview of

history. In this case, truth is no longer a one-sided vision; it is particularized by the

effects and meanings that its representation has productively conveyed.

Rushdie attempts to counter the discourses which have served to dehumanize

and marginalized the individual voice within the society. Thus, he situates himself

within a paradigm of postcolonial writers endeavoring to deconstruct the linguistic

oppression leveled against so-called marginalized others by turning against the

vendors of the dominant, repressive discourse. Also, he struggles to question the

content of colonial power and ideology and to subvert the very identities of the

colonizer simply by his inspired use of the colonizer‘s language. He chooses to accept

141

―the fluidity of cultures and identity in his very person as well as his multiple fictional

selves‖ in which:

history becomes a process, a fluctuation of meaning and cultural signified,

though not lost is made and remade on trans-national sense … If the colonial

powers have tried to reshape history, Rushdie attempts to rewrite history and

politics by freeing the colonial subject from racial domination and

imperialism. (Raj and Kundu 178)

Rushdie‘s fiction displays a history of fragmentation as though he presents to

his readers the characteristics of a historian from his own view. He argues:

The one thing you learn as an historian is just how fragmented and ambiguous

and peculiar the historical record is. So, I thought, well, let‘s not try and

pretend to be writing a history. Let‘s take the themes I am interested in and

fantasize them and fabulate them ... so that we don‘t have to get into the issue;

… History does not have an absolute shape. No one can claim that history

records complete knowledge. There are many histories within the general

body of histories. From this general history there are several views that

emerge and also many multiple selves‖. (qtd. in Smale 29)

Raymond Aron holds the idea that ―social reality … contains a multiplicity of

partial orders, but it does not contain in an obvious manner an overall (global) order‖

(qtd. in Strong 184). This includes the fact that any legitimate claim of allegiances is

open for discussion. ―the question of final values must in any case remain

unanswered‖ (185). Rushdie, in Grimus and Midnight’s Children, adopts the

techniques of myth and fantasy as a deconstructive and de-centering process of the

idea of determined truth to open ways of imagination for alternative histories. Further,

in his allegorical form of history, he attempts to reconsider the individual‘s hopes and

expectations. He shifted the focus from the signified object of knowledge (ideological

or otherwise) to individual‘s narrative itself. As a result, what matters for him is the

142

individual rather than the collective truth. The image a nation is replaced by

fragmented selves and identities. The transcendental signified is eliminated in favor of

the sign itself. In his intensely political and conscious-rising novel Midnight’s

Children, he critically analyzes the so-called realities through the deconstruction of

history.

The philosophical question of truth has been the prevalent theme which

obsessed not only traditional philosophers and dialectical historians, but also literary

theorists, critics and fictional writers. What constitutes truth? What avails its

credibility? What otherwise violates its commonality? Does fact represent truth and

fiction inform lie? What distinguishes historical (factual) truth from its fictional

(fictive) counterpart? These and similar other questions shape the basic premises of

his approach to history and historical truth. For historians, truth is a recorded factual

knowledge. For novelists and literary writers, truth is a possible view of reality and

individual perspective of negotiation between reality and illusion. For Rushdie, truth

is an individual perception and possible interpretation of an event. In other words, it

lies in rejecting the totality of decision. It is relative, incomplete, particular and

personal.

The major difference between the historian and the novelist can be discerned

from their treatment of truth. While historian deals with the factual knowledge of the

past events as an objectively true account of history, the novelist is someone who

represents the factual knowledge in a subjectively poetic form. Accordingly, the

novels of this chapter deal with history from the view of imagination and fiction.

They fictionalize history and offer new alternative editions to the real incidents.

Fiction simultaneously becomes the main source of history in these novels. History is

something like a parade and the historian is not just a lens of a camera that records

143

what passes before it. Virgil Jones, one of the main characters in Grimus, summarizes

the basic traits of a historian in the following:

If he had known, he would have philosophized at length about the parade of

history, about the historian‘s inability to send apart and watch; it was

erroneous, he would have said, to look upon oneself as an Olympian

chronicler; one was a member of the parade. An historian is affected by the

present events that eternally create the past. He would have thought this

earnestly, although for some time now the parade had been progressing

without his help. (Grimus 13)

A historian in Virgil‘s formula, then, is not a mere recorder of events. The

historian is not only a good observer, but also a witness on the ages who searches for

the meanings and values. The historian is a teacher and philosopher. He realizes the

procession of history and knows the various elements and major forces that affect the

past events and the present ones as well. According to Eric L. Berlatsky:

Historians, no less than poets, can be said to gain an ‗explanatory affect‘––

over and above whatever formal explanations they may offer of specific

historical events by building into their narrative patterns of meaning similar to

those more explicitly provided by the literary art of the culture to which they

belong (314).

The parade of history is passing and succeeding, and the job of the historian is

to think of the ―parade‖ of history and elicit the meaning for the individual and the

nation. The historian is invited to draw upon the procession of history and to re-create

the imaginative version of it. History in the world of Grimus is characterized by

dynamism and mobility that generates new possibilities. The novel‘s contention is

that history is not the recorded events that are most appealing to the audience, but its

effective interpretation and meanings. In this, the philosopher Virgil in Grimus, and

after that Elfrida, a female character, see a historical event as a cyclical act that

144

introduces several, possible truths and interpretations. Similarly, reading of history of

the subcontinent is just a case in point in which the novel ponders over the alternative

possible choices of life. Grimus, like Midnight’s Children, questions rather than

negates the past historical events. The questioning of truth does not necessarily entail

its opposite. In other words, history is a sort of fiction because both of the historian

and novelist use language and representation as their medium of communication.

Still there is this overwhelming question: does fact inform truth and fiction

means falsity? To put it differently, what distinguishes historical truth from fictional

truth? To say fact imparts truth is simply to affirm a singular, monolithic view of

history according to Rushdie‘s general thought in his novels under discussion.

Totality and absolutism are the archenemies of a democratic and individual thought.

The characters revolt against the dominant authoritative conception of history because

such a view endorses a singular and hegemonic culture. History is not a one-sided act

informed by the triumphant. Historical event is a reciprocal human activity shared by

many parts and involves several factors. Historical truth is limited and is imprisoned

by its self-consumed reliability. Hence, the fictive representation of historical events

helps to free it from the ideological and narrow unidirectional elements and open up

multiple interpretive visions. The freedom of the text creates a space for other views

and ―truths‖. In short, whereas the historical truth is controlled by ideology and state,

the fictional truth is presented in a more democratic and individual space. What we

can really learn from this interpretive strategy in the two novels is that ―we build our

conceptions of history partly out of our present needs and purposes‖. In this case, ―the

past is a kind of screen upon which we project our vision of the future‖ (Becker 34).

Rushdie‘s new historical method and deconstructive approach reveals that historical

truth for a long time has been dominated by a patriarchal, triumphant and monolithic

145

culture. ―History is deeply male. History is essentially non-young. History is about the

rich and famous, not the poor. History favors the articulate, not the silent. History is

about winners … not about losers. History is about assessing distortions, not copying

out truths‖ (Vincent 25). As Peter Burke argues, ―History is past politics: politics is

present history‖ (59). The philosophical foundation of this idea is that reality is

socially or culturally constituted.

Since history is made and read by man, it has more than one meaning. The

very subject matter of history being reflective thought, such subjectivity becomes

inevitable. History is not objective because past events do not any longer exist in the

mind of the historian. Writing of history is also affected by the personality of the

author. All these factors make it impossible for the reader to reach an objective truth.

In his conception of the historian-novelist role of the writer, Rushdie has followed the

new historical approach laid down by Stephen Greenblatt, H. Aram Veeser, Hayden

White, and Linda Hutcheon.

Based on this, the novels of this chapter recreate the past and represent a

fictional version of the factual past. Simply, they deal with history from the view of

imagination and fiction. In Grimus, for example, the character, Virgil Jones defines

philosophically a historian. A historian is a philosopher and a good reader of what has

happened and in the end is someone who takes a position of the events. A historian is

not only a good observer, but also a witness on the ages who searches for the

meanings and values. He realizes the procession of history and knows the various

elements and major forces that affect the past events and the present ones as well. A

philosophical historian is somebody who studies the past events to project them on the

present situation and, simultaneously, he studies the present events to re-create the

146

past. The parade of history is passing and succeeding, and the job of the historian is to

think of the ―parade‖ of history and elicit the meaning for the individual and nation.

According to Hayden White ―historians, no less than poets, can be said to gain

an ‗explanatory affect‘--over and above whatever formal explanations they may offer

of specific historical events by building into their narratives patterns of meaning‖

(Tropics of Discourse 58). Moreover, while the historians speak on behalf of available

facts, the novelist is dealing with events out ―the process of using events, whether

imaginary or real, into a comprehensible totality capable of serving as the object of a

representation is a poetic process‖ (125). This explains why Midnight’s Children has

a lifelong passion for motion pictures and often uses metaphors of movie theatres to

define the enigmas of the postcolonial existence. Thus, Saleem, the narrator, offers the

existence of the cinema screen in order to explain his remembrance and representing

the past. Historical truth then cannot be guaranteed and its reflective reality is nothing

but a passing show and a moving picture whose reality and existence is ―a matter of

perspective‖:

Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more

concrete and plausible it seems—but as you approach the present, it inevitably

seems more and more incredible… the illusion dissolves—or rather, it

becomes clear that the illusion itself is reality. (Midnight’s Children 197)

In line with this, the novel contains parody not only, as Hutcheon argues, ―to

restore history and memory in the face of the distortions of the ‗history of forgetting,‘

but ―to put into question the authority of any act of writing,‖ thus dismantling ―any

notion of either any single origin or simple causality‖. (Hutcheon, A Poetics 129)

Epigraphs are essential parts of the structural narrative and intertextual

method. They act as captions that contain the basic themes of the novel. Grimus

147

started with selected lines taken from three famous artists who question the concept of

reality and its historicity. In other words, the epigraphs sum up the major themes of

the novel: the cyclical concept of history, reality as a matter of perspective, and

particularity of the historical truth. Like the bird, the epigraph suggests that the artist

searches for imagination and freedom. He always searches for new worlds and new

realities. Man in general searches for new planets where he can freely express himself

without any kind of dictation. People also want to emancipate themselves from the

chains of authority and imposed ideology. The business of the novelist is to create and

re-create new meaningful worlds. The concept of ―re-creation‖ is the ultimate

realization of the protagonist of the novel, Flapping Eagle. In other words, the novel

tries to show that truth can be suggested but not dictated. It is just an elaboration of

ideas contained in the epigraph, that is, cyclist view of history, multiplicity of reality,

unreliability of historical truth, social change, and celebrity of fictional truth.

Also, in Midnight’s Children, the ways in which Saleem Sinai constructs his

version of Indian past challenge the historicist approach of writing history,

questioning and undermining its power. This is one of the main themes of the novel.

Saleem almost agrees with the definition that ―the purpose of history can be

accomplished in a novel‖ and the novelist/narrator can resort to the use of his

imagination to achieve the effects he desires but he constantly refuses to see his

historical reconstructions as fictionalizations. Perhaps this is not accidental that he

deliberately uses documentary narrative and ―overtly personal and provisional

journalism, autobiographical in impulse and performative in impact‖ to make his

―effective history‖ more historical. (Hutcheon, A Poetics 115)

148

Midnight’s Children is an attempt to deny the historiographic claims of

authentic representation of the past. The major characteristic of the novel is that

history is a textual demonstration which blurs boundaries of facts and fiction. Saleem

Sinai, the first person autobiographical narrator of the novel who construes his version

of India, challenges, if not denies, the historiographic claims of authentic

representation of past. By blurring the boundaries between fiction and history, Saleem

is doing, what is invented by Rushdie, a ―chutnification‖ of history, a historiographic

process which works on his memories, dreams, and fantasies, to structure a narrative

around the recent history of the subcontinent and India. In order to achieve a

subversive historicizing version of history, Rushdie uses the techniques of fantasy,

allegory, parody, memory and dreams or magical realism. Throughout the novel, he

examines and comments on the relationship between the self and nation. He

destabilizes the fixity of the nation as a traditional view, and highlights the

individual‘s identity as an independent identity. But the novel goes beyond the notion

of history as a shaping force to foreground the ―storicity‖ of historical knowledge. It

enacts a postmodern interaction of historiography and metafiction raising several

issues of subjectivity, intertextuality, reference, ideology in historiography and its

mutual overlapping with the rhetoric of history to build a playful text in

‗historiographic metafiction‘ that ―shows fiction to be historically conditioned and

history to be discursively structured‖ (120). History becomes a subjective story. Such

a postmodern view is obviously characterized in Midnight’s Children which narrates a

historical personal story and experience. Saleem‘s subjectivized history is an assertion

of what Foucault describes: ―the unity of man‘s being through which it was thought

that he could extend his sovereignty to the events of the past‖ (qtd. in Cristi 3). Also,

149

the novel challenges the conventional ideas of history and posits a multiplicity of

histories that are comprised of a mixture of memory and recorded facts.

Saleem re-imagines and re-arranges historical events that fill in the gaps of

historical memory, though his mode may or may not concur with recorded facts. He

knows that ―most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence‖

(Midnight’s Children 282). Jennifer Santos has noted in his reading of Rushdie‘s

novel:

Saleem Sinai, the narrator of Salman Rushdie‘s Midnight’s Children,

exemplifies narcissistic narrative, inviting the reader to participate in creating

and discovering an alternative to the typical historical traditions of historical

truth as merely recorded facts: memory and the process of recalling memories

produce individual histories that overlap some aspects of recorded history yet

remain unique, individual versions of history. (1)

In his essay, ―Midnight‘s Children and the Allegory of History,‖ Neil Ten

Kortenaar remarks that ―Rushdie‘s novel is a meditation on the textuality of history

and, in particular; of that official history that constitutes the nation‖ (42). Kortenaar

also proposes that the literal and the metaphorical are the same, and Rushdie‘s point is

ultimately that ―the truth lies in metaphor‖ (52). He has shown that the life of the

protagonist, Saleem is ―merely‖ an extended metaphor of the literal narrative of

history. The novel relates the literal (real) to the metaphorical. Saleem, for instance,

has two grandfathers and that he has emerged from his mother Amina Sinai, but in the

meaning of metaphor, he is related to the features of India and the founders of

freedom. Also, his metaphor would become here India. The connection between the

literal and the metaphorical is that Rushdie wants to make fun of the political figures

who introduce themselves as ―fathers‖ but they give nothing to their children. The

metaphor in the novel functions as a form of criticism against the national narrative

150

discourse. Midnight’s Children, in particular, foregrounds the idea that historical

representations are not objective recovery of the past in the present. Rather, they do

reveal mediated, metaphorical, subjective and ideological nature of historical

representation. The novel marks an experimental moment of the postmodern novel

which refutes the claims of writing a convincing past without acknowledging the

hermeneutical process of historiography. Furthermore, in his treatment of history,

Rushdie has made it clear that history is a different concept altogether. Hence, there is

the question as to how cultural and religious focus as an agency of tradition, affects,

or to some extent, hangers on our particular insights and interpretation of history and

historical truth. This, of course, poses the need to point out what is meant by tradition

as a concept, and how it has been conceived of by Rushdie.

A dictionary will tell you that a tradition is a set of customs and beliefs that

have been passed from one generation to the next over a long period of time.

Merriam-Webster encyclopedia defines tradition as a: an inherited, established, or

customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social

custom) b: a belief or story or a body of beliefs or stories relating to the past that are

commonly accepted as historical though not verifiable. Tradition and history, for

Rushdie, are two different terms. Tradition indicates certain cultural features that

belong to a particular nation or society. Every society has its own features and cultural

background that make it distinguished from other societies. India, for instance,

characterized by its Hindu tradition which include among many other things The

Mahabharata, Ramayana, and Ganesha religious tradition. For Rushdie, tradition is

part of national denominators, for he does not reject the concept of nationhood, but

questions its claim of totality and historical truth. He vehemently argues that:

151

[t]he past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of

our common humanity. Which seems to me self evidently true, but I suggest

that the writer who is out-of-country and even out-of-language may experience

his loss in an intensified form. (Imaginary Homelands 12)

Moreover, unlike Hirsh Nandy, Rushdie does not speak of tradition in terms of

religion as opposed to secularism. In fact, Nandy‘s formulation and classification of

tradition is based on the concept of ―faith,‖ and thus fails ―to recognize that the

resources of faith itself in colonial and postcolonial modernity have to come be

appropriated, shaped, and saturated by the political‖. Yet, both Nandy and Rushdie

seemed to agree on the term ―Indic‖ as ―an identification of national culture‖ (qtd.in

Mufti 246, 247).On the other hand, the term ―history‖ is, however, a broad term

which may include tradition. Basically, it refers to chronologically recorded, told, and

narrated events. In the novels, while tradition is a matter of ritualistically collective

belief, history is an individually, conscious and practiced event is subjective

observations. Moreover, as tradition is partly divine and partly ritual, its logos become

rationally adhered to and adorned. However, the historicizing of such events brings in

a new paradigmic constellation as it clothes traditional act with political and

ideological languages:

No, nothing is sacred in and of itself, I would have said. Ideas, texts, even

people can be made sacred . . . the act of making sacred is in truth an event in

history. It is the product of many and complex pressures of the time in which

the act occurs. And events in history must always be subject to questioning,

deconstruction, even to declarations of their obsolescence? To respect the

sacred is to be paralalysed by it. (Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands 416)

Therefore, Midnight’s Children does not tell the history of India, which may

include some tradition either in theme, or in style of writing, it does not aim at

recording the facts and knowledge; neither does it tend to correct the events and

152

happenings. Also, the novel does not intend to highlight the Indian traditions as

beliefs and customs. The profession is to make us understand the factors and reasons

that stand behind the incidents of history, not from a position of a historian or a

traditionist, but from a position of a novelist. The aim is to interrogate the happenings

that cause problems to the human being as an individual and also tries to seek the

truth:

Rushdie‘s version of history is different from the traditional one, which is

logical imposed patterns, a chain of cause and effect, is seemingly objective,

definitive, unitary, repressive and closed. History in Midnight’s Children is, a

postmodern way fragmented, provisional, openly subjective, plural,

unrepressive, a construct, a reading. (qtd. in Dwivedi 520)

Tradition can be simply defined as a set of values that belong to a certain

society. The values or moral teachings and lessons coming from this tradition belong

only to this certain society. Also, any truths or values emerge from this tradition

belong only to this certain society or social and religious environments. On this basis,

historical truths and mythological rituals are particular, and are pertaining to special

environmental features. Consequently, the historical truth cannot be universalized

since it is shared by many observers, and is subject to various interpretations and

analysis, and it can also be explored by various people in the world. The field of

history has many meanings and entails more than one view. So, history is not

tradition. No one can claim that there is one ultimate meaning or final truth of history.

The main concern is to basically challenge the master narrative. The ―master

narratives of history‖ as described by George Watt is ―the offspring of a marriage

between colonial modes of control and the Enlightenment view of the inevitable

progress of mankind‖ (89). To counter this kind of narrative, the novel adopts an

alternative method by employing embedded narrative structure and petit-narrative

153

form. The main focus is the individual meaning of historical events and the

subsuming historical truth that hide behind the official historical narrative. But, what

characterizes the novel is the meta-narrative structure that deals with historical events

from a surreal point of view. By doing so, it deconstructs the realistic historical

narrative modes and questions its reliability. In other words, it de-centers the

structural system of the center and deconstructs its assumed focal contours. Historical

truth in this way is to be approached from the individual and particular interpretation

of the text, and not to be received from a given authoritarian historical knowledge. In

fact, the two novels, under discussion, interrogate the historical knowledge as a given

historical truth.

Midnight’s Children in particular, does not only discuss the colonial discourse,

but also the national and authoritarian dominating one which is turned into another

form of totalitarianism in the decolonization era. When historical knowledge is

politicized, and poetically appropriated, it becomes a form of hegemony. For instance,

it is said that one of the major reasons behind the adoption of Midnight’s Children is

Indira Gandhi‘s autocratic rule during the so-called Emergency in 1976 because this

Emergency justified repression against the public freedom. The novel refutes the

claims of Mrs. Gandhi. India or Bombay, for instance, is viewed differently. ―British

Bombay was initially the vision of a certain East Indian Company Officer Methwold.

His vision of Bombay ―was a nation of such force that it set time in motion‖

(Midnight’s Children 92) also, India is viewed from Mian Abdullah as a place of

legends. ―Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than facts‖

(Midnight’s Children 147). India is represented from different angles and views. Also,

the relationship between the individual and the country is expressed in different ways

throughout the novel. Truth, represented in the novel, cannot be monopolized by a

154

certain discourse, either in the name of nationalism or authenticity. The Widow

proves disastrous in the light of Saleem‘s view He sees her as an authoritarian ruler

who destroys the hopes of ―midnight‘s children‖ and others by creating a false

identity between herself and the country: ―India is Indira and Indira is India?‖

(Midnight’s Children 420). On the other hand, the novel represents the protagonist‘s

experience of reality and his ―taste of truth‖:

One day, perhaps, the world may taste the pickles of history. They may be too

strong for some palates, their smell may rise to eyes; I hope nevertheless that it

will be possible to say of them that they possess the authentic state of truth . . .

that they are, despite everything, acts of love. (Midnight’s Children 461)

Mujeebuddin Syed remarks that, ―Midnight’s Children attempts to map this

eclectic hybridity, and reflect the impossibility of linear and homogeneous forms of

literature, capturing the plurality of the subcontinent‖ (151). Syed further argues that

the novel ―seeks to locate the ‗Time of Origins, Sacred Time, or Great Time‘‖ (152).

Since life has no one particular reality, the social and political views will,

consequently, produce a variety of arguments and experiences: ―And there are so

many stories to tell; too many, such an excess of intertwined lives events miracles

places rumours, so dense a commingling of the improbable and the mundane! I have

been a swallow the lot as well‖. (Midnight’s Children 9)

In his article, ―Notes on Writing and the Nation,‖ Rushdie suggests that

―connections have been made between the historical development of the twin

‗narratives‘ of the novel and the nation-state‖. He says that ―the progress of a story

through its pages towards its goal is linked to the self image of the nation, moving

through history towards its manifest destiny‖ (Step Across This Line 65). Also, he

believes that ―nationalism corrupts history‖. He suggests that good writing is that

155

which crosses the geographical frontiers. He cautions, ―Beware the writer who sets

himself or herself as the voice of a nation. This includes nations of race, gender sexual

orientation, and elective affinity. This is the New Behafism. Beware of behalfies!‖

(66). He regards nationalism as a ―‗revolt against history‘ which seeks to close what

cannot any longer be closed . . . Good writing assumes a frontierless nation. Writers

who serve frontiers have become border guards‖ (67)

Rushdie criticizes writers who speak in the name of nation because he thinks

that ―nation‖ and ―nationalism‖ are narrow terms which restrict the imagination of the

writer. A writer should not be restricted to certain frontier or geographical topics

because he is a writer of all humanity. Nationalism is only part of the movement of

history. As history itself is not sacred or divine, nationalizing historical knowledge is

a debatable issue as well. When a writer addresses to nationalism or race, loses the

power of imagination. The values and truths of history cannot any longer be closed or

reduced to narrow ideas. A good writer is that who rejects to be enslaved to any

geographical ideas because he is writing for the whole world and humanity.

From what has been illustrated above, we find that the major purpose of

Rushdie‘s writing Midnight’s Children is to restore the past to himself. He tries ―to

connect his childhood to a historical event, the Independence of India‖ (Pattanayak

19). He admits: ―But also I wanted them to be not the children of their parents; I

wanted them to be the children of their times‖ (19). Actually, the novel introduces

―children‖ not as a nationally reflective image, but as seeds of change for a healthier

future. They are the children of hope for generation of all times. Rushdie tells John

Haffenden:

156

The children in Midnight’s Children become more a metaphor than an

allegory, a representation of hope and potential betrayed . . . Similarly,

although Saleem claims to be connected to history, the connections in the

book between his life and history are not allegorical ones, they‘re

circumstantial. (41)

The novel breaks the conditions of space and time because past is not a rigid

conceptual term which indicates fixity of event. Rather, it is a matter of perception

and interpretation. In this case, past is not the opposition of future or present, but it is

amalgamation of all, or in T. S. Eliot‘s words, it is not ―the pastness of the past‖ but

―its presence‖. In this case, it is a process that contains within itself the ―temporal‖

and the ―timeless‖ simultaneously. The novel attempts to show that when historical

fact gets mythicized, it tends to represent an idea, and does not inform an actual

event. As a result, mythical thought is nothing but a sublime form of imaginative

fictional art. Therefore, myth is an idealized form of historical truth. This archetypal

element in the mythical representation of history is treated in both novels, Midnight’s

Children and Grimus as a highly imaginative form of narrative. To develop this

further, it subverts the narrative of a super hero and mythical figure by placing all

mythical thoughts to the scrutiny of secular interpretation. The journey of people in

Grimus in search for new fictional and secular kingdoms as an alternate to the ―closed

nation and nationalism in ―Axona‖ is a visible instance of this. Their migration to the

world of magic and fantasy in the Calf Island tells their desire for change toward new

spaces of freedom; therefore, they are described as the ―immortals‖ of the island.

Interestingly, they are especial kind of talented and imaginative people and their

search of fantastic towns of immortality is ―to achieve wider dimensions‖ of

―timelessness‖. They yearn for what is termed by Dhawan for ―state of timelessness‖

(Three Contemporary Novelists 4).In fact, the inhabitants of the Calf Island search for

157

history without confines or imposed limitations. By doing so, the myth becomes a

celebratory individualized event rather than a collective ritual rite. Thus, the counter

factual knowledge lies in the act of narrative itself and not outside its textuality. In

this case, the actual event is betrayed by the factor of temporal and controlled by the

act of the real. And since ―reality is a matter of perspective,‖ the actual/real is left for

a multiplicity of interpretation. This is best treated through the technique of magic

realism in which the metaphorical is played against the realistic. We will see in detail

this kind of treatment in the next chapter.

Timelessness and temporality mark the two conceptual elements in the

treatment of history. Basic to the argument, history is a cyclical movement and

dynamic process which creates and recreates itself in an epiphany of different forms

and meanings. Grimus is such a novel that presents in a fabulous tale multiple

possible and alternative meanings and versions of historical reality. An event is a

result of an action; an active interaction between time and actor(s) and the context of

the occurrence. Understood this way, the main attempt is to demystify such

accumulative knowledge of history and to offer another reading and another way of

approaching a historical fact. To read a past event as a historical given act is to

divinely sanctify and consecrate its knowledge. Hence, the human act is depleted with

the forces of the unknown. Historical knowledge then is estranged to us and is

received as a predetermined truth. We have no other choice. We are left only with a

given official record of imposed truth upon human history.

In this context, Saleem Sinai in Midnight’s Children introduces the concept of

time and the myth of cosmic creation referring to Padma – the Lotus Goddess – as

―one of the Guardian of Life, beguiling and confronting mental men while they pass

158

through the dream- web of Maya‖ (Midnight’s Children 194). Therefore, ―Maya‖

becomes a metaphor for the illusory nature of reality delineated by Saleem as well as

the wild flights of imagination. This travelling between the two worlds of time is best

represented by his shifting moments between timeless world of Maya and his

attachment to Padma. He is split between the incarnated, cyclical life of Maya, and

the temporal lavishes of his beloved, Padma. The novel is subtly blurring the

boundaries between the mythical and the actual through the irresoluble dilemma of

the protagonist. His living reality with Padma in the temporal fancies of her

superstition and earthiness of spirit and her presumptions of love and marriage cannot

last even for a moment as he is bound by the law of Maya. She, thus, becomes ―the

Mother of Time‖ and a co-producer of his fictive universe (Midnight’s Children 195).

To deconstruct the conventional realist view of history, the novel, Grimus

starts with present and develops a literal reading of T.S. Eliot‘s concept of time past

and time future as being contained in time present. ―I was the boy. I was Joe-Sue,

Axona Indian, orphan…and I was to become Flapping Eagle‖ (Grimus 16). Flapping

Eagle starts out from Axona Plateau in 20th

century, as seen in his brief trip to the

plain on his twenty-first birthday; he wanders for seven hundred years presumably in

the past and is flung ashore on Calf Island presumably in our not too distant future.

But all of this could be concurrent with the present in another dimension. Life in

Grimus is not restricted to a specific period of time or place. While it can be read as a

novel about myth and fantasy, it actually produces a deep critical insight into the

reading of the officially historical knowledge especially in the postcolonial era where

the meaning of the cultural is politically tied with the historical. The concept of

timelessness and space is obviously seen in Midnight’s Children, too. The rational and

linear world of realism is reproduced by the efficiently cyclical narrative of the novel.

159

Saleem‘s story is not linear, it is circular and mythic: ―…time, in my experience, has

been…variable and inconstant…no people whose word for ‗yesterday‘is the same as

their word for ‗tomorrow‘ can be said to have a firm grip on time‖ (Midnight’s

Children 106). In another example, Saleem says, ―I shall have to write the future as I

have written the past, to set it down with the absolute certainty of a prophet. But the

future cannot be preserved in a jar; one jar must remain empty‖ (462). In this

example, Saleem is introduced as a time traveler or as a man of prophecy who knows

the future and travels across time.

In the light of the postcolonial approach, Midnight’s Children is debated as a

national allegory. In this context, an allegory can be defined as a device that is used to

imbue a text or artwork with multiple meanings and its purpose is to communicate a

moral message to the viewer or reader. This message within the text is governed by

influences outside of it. An allegory is, above all, a fiction, almost invariably a story,

which is designed, first and foremost, to illustrate a coherent doctrine which exists

outside the fiction. Thus, the story and everything in it bear an immediate reference to

a very specific aspect of the controlling doctrine which the fiction is illustrating.

Fredrick Jameson in his essay, ―Third-World Literature in the Era of

Multinational Capitalism,‖ affirms that all Third World Texts are necessarily

allegorical, and they are to be read as ―national allegories‖ because ―the story of the

private individual destiny is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the

public third world culture and society‖ (69). Although, symbolically the novel tells a

story of an emerging nation, i.e. India, it envisions the dreams of a free secular state

and society. Saleem wonders, ―From the moment of my conception, it seems, I have

been public property (Midnight’s Children 77). The novel can also be looked at as a

sequel of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru‘s autobiography and the dream that Nehru had

160

about India‘s freedom and how it turns into a reality only with the birth of Saleem and

other children at the precise moment.

As an essential element of the narrative tactic, the novel utilizes allegory to

send more than a political message concerning the issues of individual freedom,

change, and identity. While representing the historical struggle of the nation, the

novel also gives a main focus on the individual‘s position and presence in the nation.

The novel is to be analyzed as a structure which carries messages of hidden political

criticism against the great national promises, set by the political leaders. To elaborate,

the novel is not to be read as a celebration of the birth of the new generation, the

children who were born on the night of 15 August 1947, the night of Independence. It

is, rather, an expression of the feeling of failure and disillusionment that faced the

new generation who could not fulfill their expectations. Through the character of

Saleem Sinai and his fellow friends, the novel allegorizes the socio-political situation

after Independence and depicts the state of disillusionment that marked the post-

Independence period. The message of the allegory of the novel is mainly concentrated

on the value of individual freedom which was crushed by the ―totalizing discourse‖

and authoritarianism. The idea of ―nation‖ and ―national state‖ cannot be isolated

from the realm of ―history‖ and ―political history‖ in particular, and its implications

and inclusions, especially those implications which concern the struggles or problems

of the individual living under the nationalist flag. History, in this regard, is to be

apprehended as a dynamic process which encourages the various mobilities in society

to express their freedom and to offer their creative participations and productive

activities in society.

In harmony with this, the ―national allegory‖ in the novel goes hand in hand

with the general theme of history -- there should be many choices of historical truth.

161

The castration of the rigid concept of ―nation‖ or ―nation-sate‖ is meant to give space

to the individuals, gender, class, region and minorities to fully participate in the socio-

political scene without exclusion or oppression. On this basis, Midnight’s Children

came to allegorize the failure of the national state, and suggesting alternative

historical views for change. The cardinals of self-individuation of historical realities

are directed towards establishing multiplicity of them. This is symbolized by the

outcries of the oppressed new generation, 1001 children, who born at the stroke of

Independence. The force of this device is shown clearly when the characters of the

novel, led by the protagonist, Saleem, express their wrath and protest against the

oppressive policy of the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi -- the policy crowned by the

declaration of the Emergency in 1976, which has been cited above. Indira‘s problem,

as a nationalist political leader, lies in the fact that she places herself in the position of

speaker of ―absolute truth‖. The allegory in the novel came, then, to repudiate

absolutism and totality and introducing, instead, the values of individual freedom and

cultural multiplicity. Based on the new historical theory, this novel seeks to

deconstruct and de-center the idea of historically determined truth. In his allegorical

form of history, he attempts to reconsider the individual‘s hopes and expectations. He

shifts the focus from the signified object of knowledge (ideological or otherwise) to

individual‘s narrative itself. As a result, what matters in the novel is the individual

rather than collective truth. The image of a nation is replaced by fragmentation of

selves and identities. In its intensely political and conscious-rising structure,

Midnight’s Children critically analyzes so-called realities through the deconstruction

of history, ―Reality is a question of perspective‖.

In this regard, the novel unmistakably contests the idea that history is creating

the individuals, focusing on how authoritarian history victimizes them as history-

162

bearing and history-suffering. In his essay, ―Rewriting History and Identity: The

Reinvention of Myth, Epic, and Allegory in Salman Rushdie‘s Midnight’s Children,‖

Michael Reder offers a profound reading of the new historical treatment of ―history‖

as an isolated fragmented text of individual rather than totalitarian official authority.

―Saleem‘s story‖, argues Reder, ―demonstrates that individuals can fall victims to a

discourse—such as national myth—in which they themselves are denied a role‖ (227).

He also remarks that Saleem and the other members of ―midnight‘s children

conference‖ are also the victim of history as ―representative[s] of a culture whose

history has been supplanted by a dominant, European history that has controlled the

continent‖, for India, like Saleem, can be said to have fallen victims to Eurocentric

totalizing historiography. According to Reder, the mode of individual historical

discourse, proposed in the novel as an alternative, gives the individual the opportunity

to create personal meanings by highlighting some events and overshadowing others,

which emerges as a threat to the objectivity of totalitarian history (225).

Midnight’s Children is actually a politico-historical novel which conveys

several remarks about the political history of contemporary post-independence and

postcolonial India. Consequently, the various historical references in the novel

become a commentary on the ways in which the novel reconstructs an impeccable

historical record. As a historical novel, it is read as a comment on the concept of

historical truth which takes endless numbers of choices and shapes. The novel is an

attempt to retrieve what is contained by the political power as a ―divine truth‖. This

policy leads, not only, to deprive the ―midnight‘s children‖ from their rights of

dignified and free life, but also results in horrible disasters which break the principals

of the value of ―peaceful transitional authority‖. This is exemplified in the martial

laws, censorship, and military oppression against the young protests and the harsh

163

treatments they were exposed to. Though the political allegory, in its various

messages against the practices, targets specifically the reign of Indira Gandhi at the

time of Emergency, it also criticizes the authoritarian discourse produced by the

nationalist state after independence. In addition to allegory as an effectual

deconstructive device, irony is another device used in the novel as a formulating

deconstructive tool in defense of freedom and the quest of historical truth, adding

extra political remarks and interpretations to historical events. The irony is directed

primarily at the speaker of the original utterance currently being echoed. The novel

underlies Nehru‘s speech in order to question the reality after his death, especially at

the time of Indira‘s government (1977). The hidden implication is that the ―rhetoric

words‖ of the great national leader, Nehru do not find an echo in the political reality.

Rushdie ironically uses Nehru:

Jawaharlal Nehru wrote: ‗Dear Baby Saleem, My belated congratulations on

the happy accident of your moment of birth! You are the newest bearer of that

ancient face of India which is also eternally young. We shall be watching over

your life with the closest attention; it will be, in a sense, the mirror of our own.

(Midnight’s Children 122)

To demystify the enigmatic relationship between social transformation and the

politics of knowledge, the novel subjects history to the scrutiny of secular

interpretation and analysis. In this case, images and symbols serve a major technical

and thematic role. Text then becomes the play of the sign and serves as a decentering

textual force. Language game also becomes part of the intended meaning.

Consequently, the audience is involved in the process of constructing the meaning of

the text and is invited to work out his own perception. His own understanding

becomes part of the co/context of the produced event. For instance, Saleem starts his

autobiography focusing on his grandfather, Doctor Aadam Aziz before giving us

164

details of his birth. ―In an early morning in Kashmir, Aadam Aziz receives an injury

on his nose while hitting the ground . . . three drops of blood coming out of his nose‖

(Midnight’s Children 13). The scene of blood drops may symbolize the division of the

subcontinent into three main parts. Also, it might function as an expression of ―anti-

religiosity‖ since religion, according to many characters, including Aadam Aziz,

causes the division of the country into three main parts. Religion causes division of

the nation. Instead of unifying people in peace and harmony, it becomes a matter of

communal conflict and bloody clash in some circumstances. The injury of Doctor

Aadam Aziz is deployed to project his secular purposes. Religion becomes a source of

dispute and clash between communities but secularism establishes the peaceful

relations. Also, the scene of ―the perforated sheet‖ functions as a metaphorical

meaning of the confrontation between ―tradition‖ and ―modernity‖. Aziz, a doctor

recently graduated from a German university, has as his first Indian patient, Naseem,

the landowner Ghani‘s daughter. She has been exposed to the strict observances of the

purdah system for medical examination. The act of looking through a perforated sheet

--- of seeing the world in a fragmentary way – is repeated periodically in the novel

and serves as a thematic thread that unifies the account.

The use of metaphor in this particular scene ―the perforated sheet‖ is to

convey that there is always a gap between theory and actuality; the hopes and

expectations cannot be seen in reality. The metaphor holds a satire against the strict

rules of social traditions which still restrict the project of modernist transformation. It

is how the highly educated figure, doctor Aziz is hindered by the traditional values

that force him to follow them. He found himself imprisoned by traditional codes. A

man cannot see a woman only through a veil or a transparent sheet. The ―perforated

sheet‖ acts as a ―love teaching device for Ahmed, Amina, Aadam and Naseem, and

165

―as a device to activate the flow of sexual desire‖ (Dwivedi 509). Nevertheless, the

two scenes activate the hot discussion of the debate between tradition and modernity.

A secular argument supports the idea of modernity, and that they argue that time has

come to ―liberate the mind‖ from the remains of old assumptions in society. It might

be argued that the two images (blood drops and perforated sheet) are an expression of

a secular history which penetrated given social codes. As the images suggest, the

individual should be liberated from the ―collective consciousness‖ that dominates

social and historical truths.

The blurring of illusion and reality is a major technique a in the novel. This

technique is utilized to create new pictures to the social problems in reality. The aim

is to inspire the emotion and imagination for thinking and working towards the

making of imaginative world and imaginary homelands. The imaginary homelands

are based on the inspiration of creative thinking. The story of Doctor Aadam Aziz and

his wife indicate that Aadam Aziz ―problematizes the received traditions‖. Like

Naseem‘s body, the novel is offered to the audience as a series of pieces, which the

reader has to assemble in order to construct a coherent whole. It is worthwhile that the

novel urges individualism as a form of social transformation opposed to the idea of

familial and national solidarity. Saleem is always concerned with ―transformation‖

and the hope of a better future for the nation and his generation as well. The act of

Saleem hiding in the closet from the outside world and his family reinforces the belief

of individualism. Another symbolic event which emphasizes the focus on the

individual personal experience, as a tool of re-thinking historical truth, can be

obviously seen in the relationship between Saleem and Padma. She is his bridge of

contact with the earth. Her connection to him and India‘s history tells that members of

a nation are invited to create their ―own‖ history which achieves the goals of freedom

166

in all levels. Fragmentation of personal selves is a major theme in the novel. Physical

fragmentation serves as a significant central metaphor for the psychic disintegration in

the novel. Apart from Adam Aziz‘s ―fragmented‖ images of his future bride through

the perforated sheet at the outset of the novel and the symbolic ―hole‖ inside him,

there is further textual evidence regarding Saleem‘s bodily mutilation. This mutilation

thus points towards Saleem‘s split identity and his schizophrenia. His psychic split is

formally emphasized by his continually speaking of himself in first and third person.

Thus, he is presented, interestingly, as having a double perspective which makes him

a seemingly omniscient and limited first-person narrator at the same time. The simple

connection between the subject (Saleem) and the object (pickle jar) is an instance

which symbolizes the cultural identity. There is thus a simple relationship between the

individual and his objects of living. Such a pickle object constitutes the cultural

personality. Furthermore, Saleem‘s psychological fragmentation is symbolized by the

famous pickling of his life in jars, each jar of pickles. A similar metaphor for identity:

Sometimes, in the pickles‘ version of history, Saleem appears to have known

too little; at other times, too much… yes, I should revise and revise, improve

and improve…In the spice bases, I reconcile myself to the inevitable

distortions of the pickling process. To pickle is to give immortality…One day,

perhaps, the world may taste the pickles of history. (Midnight’s Children 460-

61)

Apparently, the search for selfhood is one of the recurring motifs in Grimus

and Midnight’s Children. The characters have an obsession to struggle for asserting

their personal experience and creating their own history; a history free from ideology

and resonance of pastiche. In Grimus, the major characters, namely Mr. Eagle and his

sister, Bird Dog, Virgil Jones, and the other characters who were forced to leave

Axona for Calf Island, start their long journey to search for their selfhood and

167

individuality away from the traditional conditions and patriarchal dominant systems.

On the other hand, Midnight’s Children discusses the same idea through concentrating

on the dilemma of the new born generation. The independence generation dreams of

change and transformation which enable them to discover themselves, their

individuality, and their freedom to establish the new social values. The two novels

exemplify the postcolonial thought about identity—identity is a product of experience

and discovery and not a matter of inheritance. In this, the characters of both novels

have the sufficient awareness that a real progressive change cannot exist unless an

individual discovers who he is and what gifts he has for creative participation in life.

In a subtle way, the postcolonial thematic visions are introduced through a creatively

deconstructive method which exposes the characters as divine and immortal beings, as

in Grimus, or as magicians and telepathy figures who have the ability to predict and

who have supernatural qualities to communicate with the metaphysical universe, as in

Midnight’s Children.

Contrary to Benedict Anderson‘s concept of nations as ―political imagined

communities‖ and Fredric Jameson‘s reading of ―Third World texts‖ as ―National

allegories,‖ the two novels give the personal identity a big importance. The narrative

in the novel, Midnight’s Children, for instance, is pervaded by dialogism. Since it is a

polyphonic novel, it is an open and unstable text in which the personal identity is a

matter of construction and not a fixed tradition. So, the novel problematizes

Anderson‘s and Jameson‘s postulates regarding nationalism. According to Juan-

Navarro:

allegory is the most classic manner of representation in the Indian tradition …

This tradition of allegory is based upon the Hindu myth of Maya, according to

168

which the sensory world is just a façade concealing and revealing at once a

more profound and essential order of reality. (261)

Universalizing historical truth is vigorously castigated as a forced ideology of

containment and exclusion. In this deconstructive process of re-working of historical

knowledge, Midnight’s Children endows his characters with a sense of personal quest

and particularity of experience. Rushdie tells his interviewer Pattaynayak that

―Saleem‘s personal destiny does lead to despair, but Saleem does not represent the

whole of India but only one particular historical process, a certain kind of hope that is

lost and which exhausts itself with the death of Saleem‖ (19). The structural scheme

of the novel connects the personal to the national histories as though they complement

each other. Rushdie admits this idea when he tells John Clement Ball:

it‘s a novel about metamorphosis . . . It‘s a novel about all sorts of transformation that

comes from moving from one part of the world to another, the changes in the self that

involves, or rather more dramatic and surrealist kinds of transformation. (102)

The personal identity is expressed through dialectic pathways between

individual story and collective history as seen at the outset of Midnight’s Children.

After being prophesized, the protagonist‘s birth, at the precise instance of the Indian

independence, will mark him for the rest of his life: ―I had been mysteriously

handcuffed to history, my destinies indissolubly chained to those of my country‖

(Midnight’s Children 9). Every event in the lives of Saleem‘s family has a counterpart

in the history of the subcontinent. Saleem himself comes to life at the same moment

when India is granted independence and dies at midnight on the thirty-first

anniversary of the event. Yet, Saleem continues his struggle to find himself and his

identity as an individual entity which affects and is affected by the historical events.

In Grimus, this connection takes a similar shape when the figures of different attitudes

169

―flock together‖ in a journey of quest to discover their identity and the historical truth.

To establish your independent identity means that you can energetically participate in

making a new history of your nation. This idea is evidently observed from the

experience of Eagle and his companions, the immortals who discover many

possibilities numerous arguments about life. The ultimate findings of the immortals

mentioned (or exile figures) is that life should be built on the two oppositional

concepts, reason and imagination, or rationality and emotion, national and individual.

The two opposing forces should be resolved in order to create a new project of life.

The postcolonial treatment of identity in its struggle for self-hood does never ignore

the need or longing for nationhood. This idea is apparently seen in Mr. Eagle‘s

longing for ―nationhood‖ in the intense conditions of his extreme self-hood. When he

was in Calf Island for long years, he started his feeling of national nostalgia and

longing for his original home, Axona.

The dominant forces of history based their authority on the claims of truth and

rationality will inevitably lead to oppression and exclusion of other voices. This is

what Saleem‘s story reveals about the political history of the sub-continent. Such sort

of history can never produce a true account of historical reality simply because it

bases itself on the oppression of the individual as a major participant. The message

behind Saleem‘s story is to offer an alternative reading of history which intimates a

plethora of different voices and forces in society. In his famous article, ―Children‘s

Voices at Midnight: Can the Subaltern Speak in Rushdie‘s Narrativazation of History?

,‖ Enrique Galvan Alvarez points out that Rushdie‘s Midnight’s Children can be read

as ―a narrativized history‖ because it narrates the voices which are silenced by the

traditional forces of history (115). Alvarez adds that ―Rushdie‘s intend is not to write

history, but to look at his writing, liberated from the interpretive limits of authorial

170

tyranny as a piece of history, of narrativized history‖ His central idea is that

Midnight’s Children is to be read as ―subaltern history‖ (116). This observation

reinforces that the new historical approach, which looks at history as text, ―challenges

the rigidity‖ of the traditional methods of history and that new historicism offers a

meaningful interpretation by narrativizing the ―historical facts‖. In this case, history is

constructed from the very simple and minor voices, and it includes ―variegated of

subjectivities‖ (118).This helps to re-write the subaltern histories and those who were

excluded by the traditional methods and rigid interpretations of ―grand narrative‖

structures. Furthermore, the narrative tactic here suggests a fantastic interpretation of

history and historical reality. In this method, the oppositional dichotomy of the

―magic‖ and the ―real‖ is deconstructed. For this, Midnight’s Children is a

representation of miraculous and fantastic history against the rational interpretations.

In the magical history, the individual is regarded as the central player and those who

were silenced, emerged as significant axis in the narrative.

From a postcolonial perspective, the new historicist approach comes to

reconsider the marginalized voices ignored by the totalizing or mastering structures of

narrative. Also, ―the fantastic reality‖ becomes an alternative to what is so-called as

―an objective authenticity‖. This approach is utilized to celebrate creation and

individuality in the face of authority and collectivity. The focus of Midnight’s

Children is not the great narrative of the nation as a unitary subject, but the many and

fragmentary subjectivities. By doing so, the novel is ―voicing a subaltern historical

consciousness‖ through a variety of narratives which cover all voices in society, and

by this, historical reality cannot be reduced to a totalizing discourse dominated by a

particular elite.

171

Regarding the philosophy of truth and factuality, the novel contains many

dialogic discussions between different characters about many issues of life. As a

result of this widely dialogic panorama, there are countless arguments about various

aspects of life -- social, political, art and even aspects of technology and its products.

People of different social and political realities express their views freely and defend

their arguments discernibly. The married couple, Hanif and Pia embodies the

opposites that dominate the narrative. Hanif believes in the accurate representation of

reality through art. The conflict between the two characters (Hanif, the film producer

and his actress wife, Pia Aziz) is a confrontation between two opposite aesthetic

views -- melodrama, a genre, which consciously plays with the spectator‘s feelings by

manipulating history, and the realistic and naturalistic tradition, which seeks to reveal

the truth of contemporary life. Hanif in turn, rebels ―against the entire iconography of

the Bombay film, in the temple of illusions, he had because of the high priest of

reality‖ (Midnight’s Children 292). The last comment implies the contradictory nature

of the character; although he works for an industry which mass-produces sentimental

stories, he is nevertheless, fixated by the idea of portraying in detail the physical

minute of everyday life.

The characters in both novels serve to problematize the fixed myth of nation.

The dialogic approach adopted in the novel is a methodological rehearsal of an

alternative historical reality whereby the given historical facts and assumptions have

been destabilized, refuted, and refused. Even things thought of as fixities were subject

to discussion and interrogation. The characters appear as philosophers and thinkers

who introduce their own views of life. The polyphony of voices and insights proposed

in the novels assert the democratic, new historical view.

172

Grimus is made significant by its ability to build pluralistic worlds mediated

by fantasy which permits entrance into alternative universe. It is a history-seeking

novel. The central character, Flapping Eagle, and his companions travel from one

place to another, seeking shelters for new free lives. Also, they seek the truth of life,

knowledge and new possible histories. Elfrida proclaims, ―There are a million

possible Earths with a million possible histories, all of which actually exist

simultaneously‖ (Grimus 53). Similarly, Midnight’s Children revolves around the

search of new possible worlds of India. This idea has two shapes; one is the

imagination of landscape, and the other is a projected image of the concrete reality.

The novel concerning the first level, tries to re-imagine and re-read the contemporary

history of India. It draws on the events that took place in the subcontinent and re-

imagines possible visions and interpretation to them. It re-evaluates what happened in

the past and re-thinks incidents such as independence, partition, regional wars,

internal political slashes, emergency, etc. All these events pass into the landscape of

imagination. Memory plays a crucial role in the novel as a way of recalling the

incidents and, accordingly, reworking and evaluating of the things happened. It

becomes a tool of evaluation and deconstructing historical determinacy.

In addition to the dialogical method, the novel deploys the concept of

salvation as a political view of participation. This project is based on the idea that

instead of partition and religious conflict, we can establish a secular state which

guarantees religion as faith and the state as a political system. This view is based on

the idea that nation as a political system is a transitory and transformational process in

the formation of historically socio-political thought. Based on this goals and

principles of transformation of the authorial history that meets the demands of the

nation, the novel unfailingly destabilizes the official history of the nation and opens

173

up many possible views to approaching historical knowledge and record. This

alternative view of history is expressed as a project of democracy and secularism

which rejects all sorts of chauvinism and tyranny. The variety of social and political

mobilizations should participate in the making of this history that people want to

change. Midnight’s Children also emphasizes another aspect of individuality, i.e.,

history is an individual event and that what is told and received is only one version

among many possible ones. The novels are all a textual field of the ―individual‖ rather

than the domain of the ―nation‖. Therefore, the alternative realities of art and myth-

making are used as a reaction against the official political narrative. The postmodern

theories of subjectivity can easily be applied and worked out in the novels in that the

inter-connected categories of fragmentation, mutability and identity and alterity are

common aspects of identity-formation that directed and dominated his treatment of

history and historical truth. Saleem proclaims:

O eternal opposition of inside and outside! Because, a human being, inside

himself, is anything but a whole, anything but homogenous; all kinds of

everywhichthing (sic) are jumbled up inside him, and he is one person one

minute and another next. (Midnight’s Children 236-37)

Saleem foregrounds memory as feature of his reclamation of the past and re-

creation of history. Despite its vagaries, he values his remembered version of events

more than literal facts of history. He tells Padma, ―Padma if you‘re a little uncertain

of my reliability, well, a little uncertainty is no bad thing‖ (Midnight’s Children

212).History is simply an individual‘s memory and reflection. Memory takes the

place of the so-called scientific and objective documentation exploited in the

conventional historiography. Historical truthfulness is unfolded through Saleem‘s

memories. He wants to suggest that since memories are almost always unreliable,

174

historical truth and reality should be conceived of as constructs. This enables Saleem

to alter reality by depicting the events as he remembers. Therefore, the role of

memory in Saleem‘s narrative is said to be subverting the claim of the traditional

history writing to objectivity since the focus is on memory‘s ability to create

subjective and multiple possibilities. Saleem draws attention to the role of memory in

this process:

I told you the truth,‘ I say yet again, ‗Memory‘s truth, because memory has its

own special kind, it selects, it eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes,

glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its

heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human

being ever trusts someone else‘s version more than his own. (Midnight’s 211)

In Imaginary Homelands, Rushdie explains, ―what I was actually doing was a

novel of memory and about memory, so that my India was just that: ‗my‘ India, a

version and no more than one version of all the hundreds of millions of possible

versions‖ (10). And by means of resting Saleem‘s narrative on memory, and by giving

wrong dates for historical facts, the novel interrogates the reliability and objectivity of

history. Again, the outcome of opposing individual stories to official history is the

blurring of the distinction between fact and fiction. Saleem reflects on the influence of

his errors on the authority of his narrative:

Does one error invalidate the entire fabric? Am I so far gone, in my desperate

need for meaning, th3at I‘m prepared to distort everything – to re-write the

whole history of my times purely in order to place myself in a central role?

Today, in my confusion, I can‘t judge. I‘ll have to leave it to others.

(Midnight’s Children 166)

Through the personal life experience of his protagonist, Saleem tries to explain

the process of regaining identity through literature, to confront the past, to be aware of

the collision of reality and fiction, and to start an emancipating process through the

175

pre-adaption of the own language or dialect. He describes in this magical-realistic

novel that ―in a country where the truth is what it is instructed to be, reality quite

literally ceases to exist, so that everything becomes possible except what we are told

is the case‖ (Midnight’s Children 326). Hence, the novel can be analyzed as a way of

co-opting political and literary power because it de/reconstructs India‘s latest past by

analyzing postcolonial issues such as identity, the loss of the self, migration and

fragmentation through displacement, and the difficulty of facing one‘s historical past.

In Midnight’s Children the narrator Saleem argues: ―so that the story I am going to

tell, […] is as likely to be true as anything; as anything, that is to say, except what we

were officially told‖ (Midnight’s Children 335). The novel further concentrates on the

legitimization of the power of authority: ―it is possible to create past events simply by

saying they occurred (Midnight’s Children 443). The is not to narrate historical

incidents, but to productively question the authority of their truths and accountability.

Thus, history can be accomplished to make an ―effective history‖ more historical.

Michael Reder observes that:

when Rushdie speaks of ‗memory,‘ he is speaking not of cultural memory or

national consciousness but of individual memory, […] the history in

Midnight’s Children is seen through the eyes of an individual: it is not the

dominant, official ‗History‘ but a history that is personalized and therefore

given life, significance, and meaning‖. (Rewriting History 226)

Furthermore, ―the past is a foreign country‖ (Imaginary Homelands 9). Saleem

underscores the role of memory and recreation. His remembrance of his past life and

boyhood in Bombay, his ―lost city‖, resembles to some extent William Wordsworth‘s

re-visit to ―Tintern Abbey‖ in recalling and reconstructing the history of his

childhood. The essay sums up his attitude towards past and history. Rushdie says that

he feels as though his past boyhood in Bombay were illusions (9). The interesting

176

point here is the contrast and juxtaposition of facts with illusions. The function of

memory is to regain the past as an ideal pattern of life. It is used to construct an ideal

picture of life. The purpose is to dissect the total block of history into fragments of

memories, and then rebuild a new structure of life and truth. Therefore, loss and

alienation as dominantly postcolonial themes are featuring as a tool of deconstruction

and rearrangement of history. An individual likes to escape chaos and loss into a

landscape of order and meaningfulness. A memory of an incident is utilized to create

meaningful and imaginary pictures of life. As Saleem Sinai repeatedly proclaims,

history cannot be pickled in one jar because the future cannot be pickled and

preserved. Tapan K. Ghosh comments, ―completely alienated from the world outside

the factory, he watches the people preparing to celebrate the coming‖ (144).

Readers should always remember, however, that Midnight’s Children

structurally and thematically offers alternative endings. In dealing with history as an

alternative theme, the novel blurs the real-life incidents and those stories recalled and

recreated by the act of memory. It offers imaginary countries and solutions to the real-

life problems. The novel opens many choices for change and builds a counter-

narrative against the claims and allegations of the political power. Ghosh argues, ―By

privileging the truth hidden in fiction, Saleem‘s story offers a self-conscious fictional

alternative to the linearity of historical narrative‖ (58). Accordingly, Saleem reflects

on the relationship between ―reality‖ and ―truth‖ and enunciates his narrative

philosophy:

True, for me, was from my earliest days something hidden inside the stories

Mary Pereira told me: Mary my ayah who was both more and less than a

mother; Mary who knew everything about all of us. True was a thing

concealed just over the horizon towards which the fisherman's finger pointed

177

in the picture on my wall, while the young Raleigh listened to his tales.‖

(Midnight’s Children 79).

Truth for him is what is concealed in the story / fiction of his foster-mother

and that reality is contingent. Midnight’s Children analyzes history in relation to the

individual. The individuals are not bound by time and place. They are floating

subjects, moving between temporality and spatiality to timelessness and simultaneity.

Just as history is a product of heterogeneity of events and chronologies, they are a

product of multiple identities. Their identity contains within itself multiple histories.

Such a kind of identity is against purity. The idea of multiple and impure identity is

based on a proposition that our history is the narrative of our own identities which are

subject for the examination of the viewers. Therefore, the interpretation of this

narrative differs from one opinion to another and is influenced by many factors. As a

result, historical truth can never be a singular.

Pursuant to the new historical method, the novel attempts to destabilize history

and places it as a subject for discussion. Midnight’s Children deliberately distorts the

actual dates of famous public events in the Indian history. Depending on his memory,

Saleem does not give the actual account of events when narrating the past because he

writes from his memory. He falsifies the date of Gandhi‘s death for the purpose to

condemn his assassination. Another example is his lie about Shiva‘s death, a lie that

he himself acknowledges: ―To tell the truth, I lied about Shiva‘s death‖ (Midnight’s

Children 443). This has led the reader to see the accounts of history as unreliable. By

perpetrating a bald falsification of the ―truth,‖ the novel creates limits for the working

of memory as a creator of alternate realities that replace a unity of historical truth.

There is, sometimes, a need to unreliable narration of history since there is no an

ultimate truth in this world and that ―facts are hard to establish‖ (Imaginary

178

Homelands 25). For this reason, history is tailor-made to suit the imaginary visions.

This idea has been embodied in Midnight Children where Saleem ―cut[s] up history to

suit‖ his affections and family laments. This points out that it is difficult to reach an

objective truth.

Purposefully, Saleem‘s erroneous account of historical facts is intended to

offer a mythical view of history as an alternative so as to minimize the importance of

the accurate dates in conventional history writing, which should be read as a threat to

the accepted conceptualization of time: ―no people whose word for ‗yesterday‘ is the

same as their word for ‗tomorrow‘ can be said to have a firm grip on the time‖

(Midnight’s Children 106). Thus, the novel opens the way for alternative solutions by

deconstructing the grand narrative. Instead of rewriting the known history, the novel

challenges the very notion of totalitarian, writing itself either in the hands of the

colonizing powers or the national politicians. Rushdie says: ―the novel is one way of

denying the official, politicians‘ version of truth‖ (Imaginary Homelands 14).Saleem,

for instance, understands well that he is ―impure‖ because he is a gathering of

experiences, ideas, philosophies, and individuals. In fact, the novel opens with the

confession ―above all things, he fears absurdity the most (Midnight’s Children 4). As

Sabrina Hassumani argues, ―[Saleem] realizes that the only meaning available to him

is that he is superimposed onto ―reality‖ and that this ―meaning‖ or interpretation of

reality is flawed and impure because the process of remembering is open to

distortions‖ (41). In writing down the chapters of his history, he has preserved it, but

in an imperfect and impure manner and finally, he is no longer abscessed with purity

(Midnight’s Children 307), and ultimately he recognized that he is a construct of

history.

179

The concept of magic realism is used as a postcolonial discourse in a

postcolonial context. This concept can provide us with a way of effecting important

comparative analysis between historical truth and existing realities, and secondly, that

it can enable us to recognize continuities and discontinuities of the individual

circumstantial realities and past historical accounts that form a genre system

dominating the cultural scene. Therefore, magic realism is employed as an

envisioning re-creative device to comment on the conventional regressive view of

history. What is believed as a determined given fact is nothing but a constructed

social image of reality. Nothing is fixed, guaranteed or final. The characteristic

maneuver of magic realist fiction is that its two separate narrative modes never

manage to arrange themselves into any kind of hierarchy. In magic realism this battle

is represented in the language of narration by the foregrounding of two opposing

discursive systems, with neither managing to subordinate or contain the other. It is

used as a fantastic form to new visions of everyday reality and also as a counter-

narrative to the centralized systems. Critics always recognize that Midnight’s

Children combines incompatible narratives. The novel emphasizes its juxtaposition of

the realist and the fantastic.

The technique of magic realism stays grounded in the phenomenal world,

unlike fantasy, which is set in the unreal. It is a device used in the novel for showing

that fantastic and hyper-realities can be achieved at least in the realm of imagination.

The purpose is also to inspire the individual abilities to re-think reality and suggest the

alternative versions of it. This opens ways for discussion and division of opinions.

Notwithstanding, despite their magical faculties, the children remained ―a sort of

many-headed monster, speaking in the myriad tongues of Babel . . . the very essence

of multiplicity‖ (Midnight’s Children 229). In sum, the new generation has been

180

gifted by various magic faculties which provide them with supernatural power. This is

read as a mechanism defense against the official power in the realist context. The

fantastic children try to turn into supernatural beings to escape the repressive reality

of the centralized system. In the same vein, we see this mode working in Grimus,

especially in the scene of the immortal figures who escape the oppression of the

centralized system in ―Axona‖. By this mode, the young children in Bombay in

Midnght’s Children try to re-create their own imaginary reality, the reality which is

featured as magic and super natural one.

Fantasy, myth, and magical narratives necessarily perform an act of dissent

here by displaying an alternative method of societal organization and narrative

construction. This organization involves the paradigmatic dissenting nature of myth;

myth as paradigm cuts across the syntagmatic narrative of the state (Uskalis 4). Magic

realism and romance as literary modes in Midnight’s Children serve to introduce an

alternative historical view. The world and the political situation are described as

chaotic and in full of disorder. As a result, the novel makes uses of romance to

suggest new possible alternatives to chaotic situation. Purposefully, the use of magic

realism as technical device to blur the boundary between illusion and reality serve to

convey that there are still many possible ways and versions to deal with the chaotic

situations. The ―immortal‖ inhabitants of Calf Island in Grimus recreate their own

fantastic life away from the stagnation and rigidity of the centralized system in

Axona. In short, the mode of magic realism in both novels is used as a counter-

canonical device to confront the social sufferings and to repudiate the claims of the

authoritarian discourse.

In a thrust of philosophy, Virgil Jones reflects: ―Language makes concepts.

Concepts make chains. I am bound‖. (Grimus 15) This feature of linguistic

181

determination is important when we examine the issue of history, which is understood

as a linguistic construction, a story, for this we can find a powerful illustration in a

comment on Flapping Eagle‘s inadvertent utterance while making love: ―A single

word, changing the course of history‖ (Grimus 173). According to Joel Kuortti,

language, which constitutes stories, ―is influential as it has the potential to change the

world‖. (65)

A postcolonial society is that which is motivated by multiple parties and

ideologies, a society of pluralism and multiplicity. The fact that Saleem‘s narrative is

not ―pure‖ facts, points out the difficulty involved in labeling ―history‖ as a ―factual‖

to begin with. History is always an interpretation that depends on the subjective

perspective of the interpreter. In Grimus there are also many programs working in

reality, and every intellectual is obsessed with his program for social metamorphose.

Kuortti comments that immortality in K is based on obsession (43). Every one of the

―immortals‖ is obsessed with his way of thinking. P.S Moonshy, who distributed the

rations in K, is obsessed with the revolutionary rhetoric of a communist society.

Similarly, Sam Pecken Paw is obsessed with the North American counterpart of the

Bigfoot. These examples tell that the secular life has many shapes and that there is no

one determined version of truth. A pluralistic society rejects an imposed way of life

and policy that introduces itself as an ultimate truth. The story of K inhabitants seems

to embody the concept of ―simultaneity of secular time‖ in Benedict Anderson‘s term

(24). In other words, the treatment of history disestablishes the hegemonic trait and is

directed at essentially isolated historical truth from the idea of ―hegemony‖ and

―domination‖ and sets instead the concept of difference and alterity. The characters

are moving ones, and they are haunted by the quest for a new world. In Grimus, for

instance, the central character, Flapping Eagle, breaks the sameness of life in Axona,

182

searching for the home of vitality and communication. The approach to spatiality is

used through the Flapping Eagle as a symbol of freedom, hybridity, multiplicity and

indeterminacy. Adding to his symbolic significance as a product of an indeterminate,

uncertain and diverse cultural slots and identities, Flapping Eagle is described as one

who combines all the contradictory qualities. The novelist highlights the contradiction

in his personality as an unstable character. The instability of his character is also

related to the idea of ―unstable identity‖: ―Several times he changed the name he gave

to people. His face was such, his skin was such” (Grimus 32).

In a traditional approach to historical fiction, there is nothing like a fixed idea

such as identity, history etc. In the new historical thought and approach, everything is

subject to revision, reevaluation and interpretation with relation to its historical, social

and cultural make-up, and everything is bound by change and metamorphoses. The

citation quoted above tells that the major character, Mr.Eagle is searching for ―a

suitable voice to speak in‖ (Grimus 32). Like this fellow creature, history is made of

many voices and is spoken in many languages. To simplify the matter, Grimus is a

tale of man‘s identity and his traveling over history. Man searches for new realities

and looks for meanings among the strata and the charts of history. On the other hand,

Mr. Eagle in s enacts several roles and indulges in many suggested possibilities in the

fictional world of the writer. The novel‘s central idea is a representation of two kinds

of reality, materialistic and fictional reality. This theme also includes an idea that the

novelist‘s world is a fantastic one. He flies to the world of immortality. The concept

of ―fantasy‖ has also a close connection with the idea of ―recreation‖. Grimus adopts

the idea of literary recreation that enriches the mind of readers with new possibilities

of life. Though these possibilities do really exist, the novel makes them anew through

the pulse of imagination. The contrast between the real and the utopian is an indirect

183

invitation to the reader to participate in the making of truth as a self-construed

concept.

Mr. Eagle is the dynamic and iconic reference of alterity, individuality and

change. He has experienced various forms of realities and systems of life. First, he

suffered the idly oppressive life in Axona. Then, he experienced the monotonously

mechanical life in the Calf Island, the island ruled by a magician, Grimus. Finally, he

starts thinking of a third alternative version of life and decides to go back to his native

place, Axona, to re-create the reality there. This transformational process enables the

Eagle to come out with new methods and horizons of looking at life from different

perspectives. He could perceive the notion of nation from ―affiliative‖ rather than

―filiative‖ point of view. Also, he becomes able to free self from the shackles of the

society and the impositions of the state. He arrives at reconciliation between his past

and present, between his soul and mind, between the universal and the particular and

between the fictive and the factual. The alternative history in the novel takes the shape

of ―resolved conflicts‖ and balanced attitudes. ―I want to return to the human race‖

(Grimus 55). The message of the novelist is that how to make life more meaningful.

Spontaneity is one feature of reality where people express themselves easily and

freely without any kind of dictation. Naturally, people and the individuals tend to

emancipate themselves from the chains of authorities and forced ideologies. So, the

business of the novelist is a re-creation of meaningful worlds of life. He does this

because he is considered a life maker and also because literature, represented by

fiction, is a mirror of reality.

In this regard, Grimus is about self-discovery of truth through experience and

change. Reverberating the postcolonial perception of identity formation, the novel

attempts to show that history is made of many voices and spoken in many languages.

184

Flapping Eagle, for instance, is overwhelmingly preoccupied with relocating his

identity in a multiplicity of realities and histories. He struggles to liberate himself

from the effect of determined thoughts and given facts. He is searching for

alternatives for this singular given account of history. The experience of loss and

frustration in Axona pushes him to embark on the journey for seeking alternative and

possible historical realities and to discover himself anew. He wants to regain his entity

that he once lost under the hegemony of monolithic culture and absolutism of truth.

The protagonist, his sister and the other eternal birds are introduced as ―anti-history‖

figures. They act against the conventional history which silences their voices and

changes them to passive receivers of history: ―Frustration was building with Flapping,

the frustration of centuries‖ (Grimus 35).

As P. Bayapa Reddy argues, Grimus is a celebrated piece of ―multiple society‖

(5). Reddy affirms that the novel represents multiple speaking voices and that the

significance of the protagonist is seen to be shared by more than one character. Each

one of those characters represents a particular view of life. They belong to different

levels and castes in society. Further, Joe Kuortti states that the major problem of the

Eagle is that he is burdened with history in terms of collective thoughts and that

because of this he loses his home and belongings. He is destined to be destroyed by

racial, cultural, religious and political forces of history. Kuortti adds that the Eagle

searches for history, not as a homogenous and transparent ―truth‖, but as a process,

one in which history is produced and constructed from an endless number of stories

(65). In Grimus, we understand that the main characters, including the Eagle, seek to

undermine the authority of history by the use of fantasy, since fantasy may represent a

kind of truth where real history is just another ideological fantasy. This stretching of

185

fabulous allusions paves the way for cooperative view of society and develops a

terrain of democratic history.

The novels emphatically highlight the interference of politics in the creation of

historical knowledge and truth. Further by their subversion of the colonial

epistemological and anthropological injections, they attempt to debunk the

nationalistic account of history which undermines the role the individual as a

formulating factor. History has been appropriated to enforce the political agendas

rather than to reflect truthful accounts of historical events. Suggestively, Midnight’s

Children is an artist‘s version of history writing goes in parallel with the politician‘s

account of history. While it is always rejectionist, oppressive and singular, the

novelist‘s representation of it attracts a wide range of possible views and meanings,

and thus establishes for particularity, multiplicity and openness. The general

atmosphere of this novel is in tune with the prevalent postcolonial trends that ascribe

the hegemonic and exclusionary measures to dominating colonial and elitist politics.

It aims to show that political history as a product of elites and patriarchs which results

in exclusion and subordination. ―The children‘s conference‖ is a parody of

hierarchical and patriarchal authority. Besides, the focus on the personal historical

experience in the novel is an alternative approach to reading of history. The concept

of ―nationalism‖ when is perceived from a chauvinistic and fanatic perspective, is

exposed as a destructive thought. The ending of Saleem‘s narrative is no doubt a

bleak suggestion of the defeat of the human spirit under the ideology of power of

politics. Yet, the novel ends with glimpses of hope of a new birth of a strong

generation who has a sufficient power to arrive to its expectation. The end of the story

is open for possible hopes and victories of real freedom in the path of a real change.

History is made and remade and it is not a grace of the victorious presented to us in a

186

form of selected incidents and processes. The identity of the main characters of both

novels under discussion, are representative iconic symbols of history that is conceived

of as unstable, movable and fragmentary.

History cannot be sloganized or sold out as a unique image. The incident of

Emergency is monopolized by political leaders as a form of salvation, and is endowed

with the sense of containment. This historical fact is interpreted as a nightmarish

experience. It tried to create a world of startling uniformity and people were forced to

conform to bureaucratic models. Those who were different, such as ―the midnight‘s

children‖, constituted a threat to the unitary world-view on which the dictatorship

based its claim for unchallenged authority. Oppressive and totalitarian systems do not

recognize ―different attitudes‖. Flapping Eagle, the leading bird in Grimus, is exiled

from Axona because he breaks the law of ―conformity‖ and purity.

The god Axona had only two laws: he liked the Axona to chant to him as often

as possible, in the field, on the toilet, while making love, if concentration

allowed; and he instructed the Axona to be a race apart and have no doings

with the wicked world [sic]. (Grimus 16)

The traditional centralized system does not accept the difference in race or

attitude. This regime introduces itself as a system of chauvinism and bigotry. Also, it

does not listen to the opposing opinions because it claims the absolute truth. As a

result, it does not have time to pay attention to any other voices because it recognizes

only its own voice and identifies only itself as a god over all. As suggested earlier,

narrative history is not an objective representation, but a means to a particular end.

Aware of this fact, the narrative invests the events of political history to denounce the

absolutism of historical truth. Generally, the novels act as a provocative discourse of

187

history and they endow some ―imagination‖ and ―creative faculty‖ with political

energies to resist the historical conditions of domination.

The novels discussed above, resist appropriating and totalizing narrative

discourse. As they satirically condemn the historical facts built on a religious and

ritual centrality, they distrust the state narrative as an ideological cultural construct.

As illustration of this, they mock the slogan that associates and equates the ruler with

the nation. On contrary, the novels look at the individual selves as a better soil for

implementing a healthy environment of studying history and historical realities. The

insistence on Saleem‘s multiple personality is perhaps a development of a common

origin, featuring with Grimus. As a blend of science fiction, fantasy, and fable, the

story has, as an informing hypothesis of the potential of the individual human being to

exist simultaneously in a multiplicity of different ―dimensions‖.

As obviously noted from the exposition of historical events, the novels do not

believe in a transparent reality. The vocabulary of history is a juxtaposition of facts

and fiction, reality and fantasy, and the states mentioned in the novels are treated from

the view of fantasy more than the reality. In short, as reality consists of countless

numbers of possibilities and perspectives, there are multiple forms of histories and

truths. Thus, if historians act as the agents of authority and the hegemony of the state,

novelists and writers are the agents of democracy and social alter. And if truth is

ordained by historians as a determined given fact, history is treated by artists and

writers as a mode of literature.

188

Works Cited

Alvarez, Enrique Galvan. ―Children‘s Voices at Midnight: Can the Subaltern Speak in

Rushdie‘s Narrativisation of History?‖ Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad

Complutense. (2009): 115-125. Print.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined communities: Reflections on the Origin and

Spread of Nationalism. London & New York: Verso, 1992.Print.

Ball, John Clement. ―An Interview with Salman Rushdie.‖ Conversations with Saman

Rushdie. Ed. Michael Reder. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002.

101-110. Print.

Becker, Carl L. ―What are Historical Facts?‖ The Philosophy of History in Our Times.

Ed. Hans Meyerholtt. New York: Doubleday Publications, 1959. Print.

Berlatsky, Eric L. The Real, the True, and the Told Postmodern Historical Narrative

and the Ethics of Representation. Columbus: Ohio State University P, 2011.

Print.

Bertens, Hans. Literary Theory (The Basics). London and New York: Routledge,

2001.Print.

Burke, Peter.Overture New Perspectives on Historical Writing. Cambridge: Polity

P, 1991. Print.

Collingwood, R. C. The Idea of History. 1946. Oxford and New York: OUP, 1994.

Print.

Cristi, Renato. Nietzsche On Authority And The State. Animus 14 (2010),

www.swgc.mun.ca/animus

Dhawan.R.K.Three Contemporary Novelists: Khaswant Singh, Chaman Nahal,

Salamn Rushdie. New Delhi: Classical Publishing Company, 1985.

189

Dwivedi, O.P ―Nation and History: A Postcolonial Study of Salman Rushdie‘s

Midnight’s Children.‖ Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social

Sciences. 1.2 (2009): 498-522. Print.

Ghosh, Tapan K. Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children: A Reader’s Companion

with Exhaustive Critical Commentary and Edited Essays. New Delhi: asia

book club, 2004.Print.

Haffenden, John. Novelists in Interview. London and New York: Methuen, 1985.

Print.

---. ―Salman Rushdie‖. Conversations With Salman Rushdie. Ed. Michaeal Reder.

Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2000. 30-57. Print.

Hassumani, Sabrina. Salman Rushdie: A Postmodern Reading of His Major Works.

Madison,London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002.

Hutcheon, Linda. Narcissistic Narrative: the Metafictional Paradox. London:

Metheun and Co., 1980. Print.

---. ―The Pastime of Past time: Fiction, History, Historiographic Metafiction.‖ Genre

20 3-4 (Fall-Winter 1987): 285-305. Print.

---.A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York and London:

Routledge, 1988. Print.

Jameson, Fredric. ―Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism.‖

Social Text 15 (1986): 65-88. Print.

Juan-Navarro, Santiago. ―The Dialogic Imagination of Salman

Rushdie and Carlos Fuentes: National Allegories and the Scene of Writing in

Midnight’s Children and Cristobal Nonato.‖ Neohelicon 20.2 (1993): 257-

312.Print.

190

Kortenaar, Nell Ten. ―Midnight‘s Children‖ and the Allegory of History.‖ ARIEL: A

Review of International English Literature. 26.2 (1995). 41-62. Print.

Kuortti, Joel. ―Grimus: Fictions Where a Man Could Live.‖ Fictions to Live in: An

Argument for Fiction in Salman Rushdie’s Novels. New York: Peter Lang,

1998. Print.

Mufti, R. Aamir. ―Auerbach in Istambul: Edward Said, Secular Criticism, and the

Question of Minority Culture.‖ Edward Said and the Work of the Critic. Ed.

Paul Bové. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000.229-256. Print.

Patanayak, Chandrabhanu. ―Interview with Salman Rushdie.‖ Conversations with

Salman Rushdie. Ed. Michael Reder. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi,

2000. 17-20. Print.

Raj, Mohit K. and Rama Kundu. ed. Salman Rushdie: Critical Essays. Vol.2 Delhi:

Atlantic, 2006. Print.

Reddy, P. Bayapa. ―Grimus: An Analysis.‖ The Novels of Salman Rushdie. Ed.Taneja

G.R. and R.K. Dhawan. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1992. 5-9. Print.

Reder, Michael. ―Rewriting History and Identity: The Reinvention of Myth, Epic, and

Allegory in Salman Rushdie‘s Midnight’s Children.‖ Critical Essays on

Salman Rushdie. Ed. M. Keith Booker. New York: G. K. Hall & Co, 1999.

225-249. Print.

Rushdie, Salman. Grimus. 1975. London: Vintage, 1996.

--- .Midnight’s Children. 1981. London: Vintage, 1995.

--- .Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991. London: Granta Books,

1991.

---. Step Across This Line: Collected Non-Fiction 1992-2002. Great Britain: Vintage,

2003. Print.

191

Santos, Jennifer. ―Historical Truth in Salman Rushdie‘s Midnight’s Children: A

Question of Perspective.‖

<http://www.gradnet.de/papers/pomo01.paper/Santos01.pdf> Accessed: 7 Feb.

2011.

Smale, David. Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children/The Satanic Verses: A Reader’s

Guide to Essential Criticism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. Print.

Strong, Tracy B. ―History and Choices: The Foundations of the Political Thought of

Raymond Aron.‖ History and Theory. 11.2 (1972): 179-192. Print.

Syed, Mujeebuddin. ―Midnight‘s Children and its Indian Con-Texts.‖ Rushdie’s

Midnight’s Children: A Book of Readings. Ed. Meenakshi Mukherjee. Delhi:

Pencraft International, 2003. 149-164. Print

―Tradition‖. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2011.

<http://www.merriam- bster.com/dictionary/tradition> Accessed: 28 Nov., 2011.

Uskalis, Eriks. ―Contextualizing Myth in Postcolonial Novels: Figures of Dissent and

Disruption.‖Jouvert. 5.1(2000).1-19. Print.

Vincent, John. An Intelligent Person’s Guide to History. London: Duckworth,

1995.Print.

Watt, George, ―De-mastering Historical Narrative in Robert Yeo‘s The Eye of History

and Kee Thuan Chye‘s We could….You Mr. Birch.‖ NUCB JLCC 7.1 (2005):

89-107. Print.

White, Hayden. Tropics of Discourse. Essays in Cultural Criticism, Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins University Press, 1978.Print.