opinion nation and history

8/4/2019 Opinion Nation and History

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Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences ( 2009) Vol 1, No 2, 498-522

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Nation and History: A Postcolonial Study of

Salman Rushdies Midnights Children (1981)

O.P. Dwivedi, Ph.D., F.G College, Rae Bareli (India)

I had a sound colonial education,

and either Im nobody or Im a nation.

I had no nation now but the imagination.1

- Dereck Walcott.

The glue of imagination is one of the basicingredients which is required for the setting up of anation. It goes without saying that the imaginationtoo has a certain limitation as the nation so formedhas its own restricted boundary. But to imagine anation without any history cannot be dreamed of.Evidently we see that both imagination and historyplay a vital role to churn out a nation. It may not beout of place to have a look at a nations definitionbefore moving ahead. The definition of nationcontinues to proliferate day-in and day-out, thereby

perplexing the concerned critics. The fact can befurther substantiated by Hugh Seton- Watsonsstatement in which he utters: Thus I am driven tothe conclusion that no scientific definition of thenation can be devised, yet the phenomenon hasexisted and exists.2 The phenomenon has beenfurther magnified by postcolonial critics, ever sinceits rise in the nineteenth century in Europe. Sincethen nation has been the cause of many untoldconflicts leading to two disastrous World Wars.Today the number of these nations has increased to196, which again reflects that each nation is

imagined in its own ways since they all have adifferent history. My statement finds legitimation inthe following words of Wang Gungwar, anAusatralian who served as the Vice-Chancellor of theUniversity of Hong Kong:

ISSN (PRINT): 1944-1088 Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences ISSN (ELECTRONIC): 1944-1096

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O.P. Dwivedi, Ph.D., F.G. College, Rae Bareli (India)

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What may emerge as the basis ofAustralian national identity is a consensus

that Australia is not part of Asia, norEurope, nor America, but a country withsome of the best modern features of thesethree countries.3

On the one hand, as cited above, we have acase of migrants from various countries forming anation. On the other hand, we have a uniqueexample of the Soviet Union, where people dispersedfrom one country to another to form as many asfifteen countries in 1991. So what forms a nation is abit perplexing to comment on. Sometimes nation

comes out of nowhere, as in the case ofdisintegration of the Soviet Union, which fracturedthe European communities definition of a nation.

The first inevitable linking of nation withimagination was done by Benedict Anderson in hisbook Imagined Communities which defined thenation first and foremost as:

an imagined political community andimagined as both inherently limited andsovereign. It is imagined because themembers of even the smallest nation will

never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear ofthem.4

Anderson goes on to say that the imagination of anation is limited because of its restricted boundary.But today his opinion has been fissured as even amigrant living in a foreign country successfullyfollows the rituals of his or her own country, whichin turn points out that the idea of a nation is moreoften than not based on a naturalized myths of racialor cultural origin and focuses on issues of separate

identities and cultural distinctiveness. Talking about nation formation, Homi Bhabha

in Nation and Narration makes a clarion call withrazor precision that The other is never outside or




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Nation and History: A Postcolonial Study of Salman Rushdies Midnights Children

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beyond us, it emerges within cultural discourse, when we think we speak most intimately and

indigenously, between ourselves.5 Bhabha alludesto this prevailing contradiction witnessed in nation-formation and different regional cultures render adifferent colour to the Indian nation and thus we geta perceived other from the same body of the Indiannation.

Defining nation-state, Ernest Renan states thatA nation is soul or spiritual principle. Two things , which in truth are but one, constitute this soul orspiritual principle. One lives in the past, one in thepresent. One is the possession in common of a rich

legacy of memories, the other is present-day consent,the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate thevalue of the heritage that one has received in anunindividual form.6 Seen from this angle, we witness that India has one soul but differentspiritual forces since it has been invaded by manywarriors and rulers in the past and the present-dayvariegated religion and culture have siphoned their way through these subsequent layers of previousconquests which are deposited over Indias soul.

Prior to Andersons concept of nation as animagined community, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru,the first Prime Minister of India, too imagined abouthis nation i.e. India. Though he failed to link nation with imagination, but unconsciously, his imaginedIndia as stated below meant the same:

As I grew up and became engaged inactivities which promised to lead Indiasfreedom, I became obsessed with thethought of India. What is this India apartfrom her physical and geographicalaspects? What did she represent in thepast? What gave strength to her then?

How did she lose that old stregth? [:]Does she represent anything vital now?7

Evidently, we see that Nehru imagined about Indiasfreedom which in turn meant its political autonomy.




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Indias vitality can be viewed from the fact thatquickly after gaining much sought after

independence, she has became a powerful nation.

The history of every country is replete withinstances of multifarious struggles. It goes withoutsaying that during war time regional, cultural andpersonal differences solidify into a national unity, asone feels an enhanced sense of belonging to onesnation. But at the same time, these variegatedregional and cultural differences brought about thedivision of colonial India into two independentnations India and Pakistan in August 1947.

Talking of history as being another constructivesource of nation, one cannot but agree that historydoes provide with a sense of belonging to thedenizens of a nation. To imagine a nation withouthistory, would be to imagine history without wars. James Joyce says, with flawless precision, thatHistory is a nightmare from which I am trying toawake. Bankim Chandra Chaterjee stated long timeback: We must have history, and found itsresonance in Partha Chaterjees statement, whostated that the materials of Hindu nationalistrhetoric current in postcolonial India were fashionedfrom the very birth of nationalist historiography.8Nevertheless, the fact cannot be denied that thesame history has mostly been fabricated to pleasethe mighty. Concurrently, we witness that historyhas been a source of great narrative in post colonialliterature, for its concerned nations. Even JohnMcLeod, a postcolonial critic, approves that thenarration of history is central to the narration ofnation, oblivious of the fact that there are more thanone national history.

The above discussion would be my point ofdeparture which I should like to develop in relation

to Salman Rushides Midnights Children(1981). Thispaper also endeavours to highlight the varioushistorical details mentioned in this novel.




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Salman Rushdies Midnights Children markedthe beginning of a new era for Indian English novels

both in India and abroad and went on to win theBooker of Bookers, the best novel to have won theBooker Prize for Fiction in the awards 25 years ofhistory. Midnights Children is being regarded as afoundational text of postcolonialism. The reason forthis immeasurable popularity of Rushdies MidnightsChildren is to be found in its unique style. Finallythere appeared an Indian writer who told the story,the way it should be told, and who did not writeabout village life and social ills. The days of R.K.Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and their peer group witnessed a sunset. Rushdie chutnified both the

Indian history and language with his acute sense ofhumour and invented new metaphors of nationhood.

The genesis ofMidnights Children is to befound in a familiar joke: two months after Rushdie was born, the British ran away from India. AsRushdie revived his fainted memory:

This joke was almost told to embarrassme at awkward moments, which gave methe idea to take a child and a country,and to join them comically. From thatthere was a short step to having the ideaof a child that was born exactly at themoment of independence, and whobelieved himself to be connected to thecountry. Then there was the story of thechild growing up and the country growingup, so to say, in parallel, it began withthat.9

This joke churned out the birth of Saleem Sinai, theprotagonist of the novel, at the stroke of midnight onAugust 15, 1947, at the precise moment of Indiasindependence. With him are born the other one

thousand midnights children all born in the earlyhours of Indias independence. Saleems birth iscelebrated by Pandit Nehru, newspapers, and manyothers. At the very beginning of the novel, hints are




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It seems to me that everything in bothbooks has had to do with politics and

with the relationship of the individualsand the history.11

Consequently the various historical references in thenovel become a commentary on the ways in whichRushdie reconstructs an impeccable historicalrecord.

In his Imaginary Homelands, a collection ofessays, Rushdie states that he is constantlyreminded of the fact that his present is foreign andthe past is home, even though a home effaced withthe passage of time. In such a situation, he is forcedto look, back at India, although fully aware of its thatif we do look back, we must also do so in theknowledge which gives rise to profounduncertainities that our physical alienation from Indiaalmost inevitably means that we will not be capableof reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost: that will in short, create fictions, not actual cities orvillages but invisible ones, imaginary homelands,Indias of the mind.12Thus he comes out with a planto project the Indias of his mind in his novelMidnights Children.

Memory also plays a vital role in theconstruction of a nations history. Rushdie tooacknowledges this fact in an interview given toB.B.C. He says :

Memory has its own special kind. Itselects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates,minimizes, glorifies, and mollifies also,but in the end it creates its own reality,its heterogeneous but usually coherentversion of events; and no same humanbeing ever trusts someone elses version

more than his own.13

Memory thus activates the narrative in MidnightsChildren, the purpose of which is to relate privatelives to public events and to explore the limits of




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individuality in a country as big, as populous, and asculturally variegated as India14. Evidently, we see

that the revival of Rushdies memories, in bits andpieces, was edited to produce his novel, MidnightsChildren. No need to say that this memory revivalalso rendered the novel a historical touch with ashadow line of realism.

Midnights Children is the story of an emergingnation i.e. India, though it also relates to the birthand growth of Pakistan and Bangladesh and evenoffers details about Great Britain. Rushdiesuccessfully draws a parallel between the privatedestiny of Saleem and the public destiny of India.

Saleem sometimes thinks that : From the momentof my conception, it seems, I have been publicproperty (p. 77) . Midnights Children can also belooked as a sequel o Pandit Jawaharlal Nehrus AnAutobiography, though the latter was written in acolonial period, whereas Saleems account inMidnights Children covers both the colonial andpost-colonial periods in Indian history. The dreamthat Nehru had about Indias freedom turns into areality only with the birth of Saleem Sinai. Rushdie,ironically uses Nehru to say:

Dear Baby Saleem, My belatedcongratulations on the happy accident of your birth . We shall be watching overyour life with the closest attention, it willbe in a sense, the mirror of our own.(p.122)

Saleem thus becomes a representative figure of hisgeneration, and to be more precise, of all theIndians. He says:

I am everyone everything whose being inthe world was affected by mine. Nor

am I particularly exceptional in thismatter; each I, everyone of the nowsix-hundred-million plus of us containsa similar multitude. (p. 383).




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This inevitable connection of Saleem with India andthe Indians certainly makes Midnights Children a

historical novel containing a compendium of data, ofdates, important names of political figures allinextricably linked to Indias freedom.

The reading of Midnights Children as anational allegory deepens the belief of Fredrick James on that All Third World texts arenecessarily allegiorical and in a very opecific waythey are to be read as national allegories.15 Thisis due to the fact that postcolonial writers want toglorify their nation and provide their readers a senseof nationalism. But this concept of nationalism is a

bit perplexing especially in the case of India, which isa symbol of variegated colours, diverse regions andcultures. The theories of nation and nationalism failto some extent when applied to India. The conditionfurther deteriorates with the increase in the numberof regional and communal clashes. The questionthen arises as to what type of nation is India, whenits basic constituents are relentlessly strugglingagainst each other. India has no concept to unite itsdenizens. Every region has a different history and soare their cultures. The same disparity can bewitnessed in case of language, and crossing a region

can ironically lead to problems ofmiscommunication. The failure to efface the past onthe parts of the Indians is still at best demonstratedin its political affairs where present politics areshaped by conceptions of the past16 and thesefabricated ideas divide its denizens on the basis ofcaste, creed and language. Thanks to the rottenreservation system where the denial of ones rightmeans the gain of another just on the basis of caste.

One of the key moments in the building up ofIndian nation is to be witnessed in the form ofSwadeshi Movement which initiated in 1905, in therevolutionary state of Bengal. This movement,though severely suppressed, succeded in evoking anewly discovered sense of nationalism to the Indians.All of a sudden Swadeshi (Indian) products turned




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into a nationalistic symbol, and due to this theBritishers registered a sharp decline in their

business. This statement of mine can besubstantiated by Eric Hobsbauns interview which isgiven below:

Entirely new symbols and devices cameinto existence as part of nationalistmovements and states, such as thenational anthem (of which the British in1740 seems to be the earliest), thenational flag (still largely a variation onthe French revolutionary tricolour,evolved (1790-04), or the personification

of the nation in symbol or image, eitherofficial, as with Marianne and German, orunofficial, as in the cartoon stereotypes ofJohn Bull, the lean Yankee Uncle Sam orthe German Michel.17

The above-mentioned nationalist icons and symbolscan then be looked upon as the fundamentalelements of a new nation. These nationalist symbolsowe their existence to the imagination of indigeneouspeople. According to Merveyn Morris, nothing ismore important in nationalism than the feeling ofownership.18

For the purpose of making the novel a nationalallegory, Rushdie had provided Saleem and the othermidnights children with a magical faculty:

What made the events noteworthy wasthe nature of those children every one ofwhom was, through some freak of biologyor perhaps owing to some prenaturalpower of the moment or just conceivablyby sheer coincidence, endowed withfeatures, talents and faculties which can

only be described as miraculous (p. 195).And further, the rendering of the various magicalfaculties to the peer group of Saleems otherthousand children could be found below:




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So among the Midnights Children wereinfants with powers of transmutation,

flight, prophecy and wizardry but twoof us were born on the stroke of midnight.Saleem and Shiva to Shiva the hourhad given the gifts of war (of Ram whocould draw the undrawable bow; ofArjuna and Bhima, the ancient prowess ofKurus and Pandavas united unstoppablyin him!) (p. 200).

All these mythological names revives in the readers asense of their past history, and thus Rushdiesucceeds in connecting the past with the present.

Along with the thousand Midnights Children,Saleem is also provided with a magical faculty oftelepathy which plays a vital role in connecting theMidnights Children on a common stage and thushelping the narrative to move forward.

Saleem starts his autobiography focusing onhis grand father Aadam Aziz, before giving us detailsof his birth. In an early morning in Kashmir, AadamAziz receives an injury on his nose while hitting theground during his prayers, which results in the fallof three drops of blood from his nose. Probably these

three drops of blood symbolically represent thesetting up of three free nations India, Pakistan andBangladesh. As a consequence of this injury, AadamAziz vows never to pray again, and never to bowbefore man or God, and this in turn, creates a holdinside him. Further Aadams nose is symbolic of hisrole as a patriarach of a dynasty, and all hisdescendants bear this mark. Doctor Azizs nose established incontrovertibly his right to be apatriarch. a nose to start a family on thered beno mistaking whose brood they were (pp. 13-14).Rushdie adopts the idiosyncrasies of a child in

describing Azizs nose : You could cross a river onthat nose (its bridge was wide) (p. 13). This injury ofperforated sheet finds mention time and again inthe novel so often that it fades its literal meaning




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and becomes a natural symbol. Disturbances inIndia tend to create fresh holes in this bed-sheet

with the passage of time. It is also attended toPakistan that moth-nibbled land of God. It alsorepresents a part of Ahmad Sinai, to whom AminaSinai, mother of Saleem Sinai is married. AlthoughAmina is married to Ahmed, she continues to have a warm heart for Nadir, her ex-husband . The bed-sheet teaches to Amina the act of loving Ahmed:

To do this she divided him, mentally intoevery single one of his component parts.Each day she selected one fragment ofAhmed Sinai, and concentrated her entire

being upon it until she felt fondnessrising up with her and becomingaffection, and finally, love (p. 68).

Thus, the perforated sheet acts as a love teachingdevice for Ahmed, Amina, Aadam and Naseem. Italso acts as a device to activate the flow of sexualdesire.

In the very next chapter of the novel, we aretold about Padma, an illiterate girl, named after thelotus goddess (p. 24) and who works in a Picklefactory managed by Saleem. She is, writes Uma

Parameshwaran the collective consciousness, thespirit of the country. Padma is Saleems contactwith the earth19 Padma is deeply attached to Saleemand performs her duty of a nurse cautiously Saleemcalls her a plump Padma sulking magnificently Padma. Strong, jolly, a consolation for my last days.But definitively a bitch-in-the-manger (p. 24). Sheprovides the necessary ear to Saleemsautobiography, but does not succeed in attractinghim. Saleem constantly ridicules her for her illiteracyand tells us that he has attempted to educate her.Padmas lust and emotions are not satisfied by

Saleem, who thinks that she craves only for sex.Ironically we find Saleems infertility very soon.Padmini is a testimonial of the double-colonizationof women, both at home and outside, since times




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immemorial. Freedom for the nation has broughtonly limited liberties for them. All the existing rules

and codes of conduct are meant only for them.Daughterhood signifies difficulty in Indias male-biased society difficulty both at home and outside. The women (Padma) in this novel does not find anyassurance of self, nor she can create a room of herown. This fact finds support in the following lines ofFreedom Nyamubaya, a Zimbabwe based poet:

Once upon a time

There was a boy and a girl

Forced to leave their home

by armed robbers.

The boy was Independence

The girl was Freedom

Independence came

But Freedom was not there.20

Another example of male chauvinism is Rushdiesdeliberation with which he focalizes only Saleems

story, while neglecting Padmas.

Padma performs the role of a passive audience,but concurrently she distracts and comments onSaleem, thus also acting as his critic. ThroughPadma, Rushdie anticipates and acknowledges thereaders frustrations. She is only a tool to lengthenthe narrative. Through Saleems eyes, Padmaperceives the various communal violences in India. Itis only at the end of the novel that the reader comesto know about Padma and Saleems relationship,that they are just partners and not married. This

happens when Saleem decides to marry her onIndias Independence day, on his thirty-firstbirthday, I shall reach my birthday, thirty-onetoday, and no-doubt a marriage will take place, andPadma will have henne tracery on her palms and




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soles (p. 462). Again we have an instance ofchemical bonding between Saleems personal history

with Indias national history. But this proposedmarriage is celebrated only in the imagination of thereaders, as Rushdie does not mention about theoccasion in the novel.

At the end of this chapter, we discover a crackin Saleems wrist which signifies the death of Tai, theboatman, in 1947, as a result of his protest overIndias and Pakistans dispute on Kashmir. Earlier inthis same chapter, we witness the brutalities ofBrigadier R.E. Dyer who along with his troops opensfire at the crowd resulting in the death of 4516

persons. Here again, Aadams nose plays a vital role,as the firing of R.K. Dyer and his troops collides withAadams sneeze which affirms that his nose will playan important role in the future generation ofSaleems family.

Having mentioned Padmas connection toSaleem and Indias history, we now move forward tothe other important events in the novel colliding withIndias important historical dates. In the chapterentitled A Public Announcement, the reader is toldabout various incidents the Cabinet Mission oldPathick Lawrence, clever Cripps, military A.V.Alexander saw their scheme for the transfer ofpower fail (p. 64). This chapter contains details ofHindu Muslim riots. It is in this chapter that wesee Lifafa Das blessing Amina Sinai, Saleems motherand his unborn child, and asks her to see RamramSeth, a palmist and an astrologer, who can tell aboutSaleems future. Interestingly the place being fixed tomeet Das in order to see Ramram Seth, is none otherthan the historical monument of Delhi the RedFort. Rushdie inevitably links the Red Fort withSaleem Sinai even before his birth, just as it is in thecase of the Red Fort, being attached to Indiasfreedom, even before the actual freedom came. As aconsequence of the incidence of the birth and theconsistency of this synchrony between his life andnations Saleem becomes heavily imbroded in




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history (p. 69), his destines indissolubly chained(p. 9) to those of his country.21 Such strong is the

bond between the two that one cannot even think ofseparating Saleem from India.

In the chapter entitled All India Radio, wehave descriptions of Indias First Five Year Plans during which the fortunes of Saleems fatherdecline, the communal riots in Bombay break out with the nearing of the elections, and also Saleemsdiscovery of his telepathic powers accompanies withThe voices bubbled in everything from Malayalam toNaga districts, from the purity of Lucknow to theSouthern slurring of Tamil (p. 168). We see Saleem

in a state of confusion because he is Padma-lessand in such a state he commits an error in recallingthe date of Mahatma Gandhis association. Thisagain signifies the importance of Padmas role as alistener to Saleems story and the fact that withoutthe audience, Saleems story of nation- buildingshakes gravely. Just as an artist needs audience toapplaud his work of art, so also Saleem needsPadmas presence. He even exaggerates to say thathe might turn out to be utterly useless (p. 52) likethe new found freedom of India. Commenting on thesame, Tapan Ghosh states that Padmas exit has

disturbed the balance between the past and thepresent and between digressiveness and linearity. Nolonger able to traverse the entire continuum of time,Saleem has to be reconciled to the narrow onedimensionality of a straight line which cannot projecta multi-dimensional reality.22 This proves correctthe prophecy of Ramram Seths that voices willguide him (p. 165).

Indias history collides again with Saleemspersonal life in the important chapter Love inBombay . At a time, when demands are constantlybeing raised for division of Bombay, on linguisticbasis, Saleem discovers the other thousandMidnights Children and his infatuation for anAmerican girl, Evelyn Lilith Burns. This love-affaircan be seen Americas generosity in providing India




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with a large aid in 1950. Saleem first gets a glimpseof her in his neighbourhood at Methwolds Estate in

1957, and like a typical Indian gets mesmerised bythe white skin and her cycling skills. Unable topropose, Saleem decides to take help of his friendSonny Ibrahim the same boy who has been at areceiving end due to his infatuation towardsSaleems sister Jamila, who with the help of some ofher friends strips Sonny. But Sonny subdues it anddecides to act as an advocate for Saleems case, at atime i.e. 1957 when the general election is round thecorner and consequently all the parties like theCongress, D.M.K. and Hindu Jan Sangh pace uptheir electoral campaigns. Evic (EvelyN) rejects this

proposal of love scornfully, Linking it to Saleemsinability to ride a bike. The bike then becomes asymbol of modern love affair, and later also results inSaleems and Sommys injury when Evic jerksSaleems bi-cycle (not bike which he cant possess).Ironically, this incident establishes Saleemsconnection with the other midnights children : they were there In my head, in the front row sendingthere here I-am signals, from north south eastwest the other children born during that midnighthour (p 187) about whom he comes to know at theapproach of his tenth birthday in January 1957. He

becomes aware that out of the total one thousandand one children, only five hundred and eighty onesurvive and the remaining have died due to variousunknown diseases. Of the surviving midnightschildren, two hundred and sixty one are boys andthree hundred fifteen are girls.

Shortly after this, began another importanthistorical event in India. The State ReorganisationCommittee had submitted the final report to PanditNehru, the then Prime Minister of India, and actingupon its recommendations India had been divided

anew, into fourteen states and six centrallyadministrated territories (p. 189). The Commission was being held responsible for the communalviolence in Bombay which overlooked the demands of




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its citizens to divide Bombay into two parts based onlanguages Gujarati and Marathi.

This linguistic war does not spare even Saleem, who while cycling down runs into a procession ofMarathi mobs, and failing to understand Marathilanguage; he is asked to speak Gujarati, in which heis not good either. In order to escape from themSaleem recites a Gujarati rhyme, which he hadlearnt at school for bullying Gujarati boys:

So che? Saro che !

Danda le ke maro che ! (p. 191).

It means How are you? I am well! Iill take a stickand thrash you to hell? Soon after this, we haveanother instance of the Samyukta MaharashtraSamiti collecting with the head of a Male GujaratiParishad and the rhyme of Saleem So che? Saruche ! being raised by the Marathis, leading to aninevitable clash in which fifteen killed, over threehundred! (pg. 192). Saleem helds himselfresponsible for this violence which results in thepartition of Bombay into two states. As a result ofthis division, Bombay becomes the capital ofMaharashtra.

History again takes Saleem in its train on histenth birthday, which also marks the tenthIndependence Day. Interestingly, it is also the year which witnesses various natural calamities ofstorms, drought and floods. None of Saleems friendsgive him company on that dayi.e. his birthday , dueto Evies ban on festivities. This is an example ofneocolonialism, wherein despite of attaining muchsought after independence, Indians have a specialliking for the whites and their products. The way thecitizens of Methwolds Estate follow Eviesinstructions is a substantiation of this fact. Freedom

has to take place in the minds, but that is not thecase, as mentally they are still being governed by theWhites, and blindly buying their products. The factfinds support in the following lines of Ashis Nandy:




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The West is now everywhere, within theWest and outside, in structures and in

minds.23.

Seen from this angle, we find that Colonialism hasgiven way to colonial modernity and this colonialmodernity i.e., the initiated dressing service,manners and acts of speaking on the parts of theIndians is the base of neo-colonialism, where foreignbrands, like Levis, Pepe-Jeans, Wrangler; Cars likeB.M.W., Jaguar and many other white things arebeing willingly accepted by Indians.

The Methwold Estate where Sinai used to live isalso a symbol of neocolonialism. The estate namedafter William Methwold who was forced to leave Indiaafter the transfer of power to India. His entireproperty consisted of four large, well built houses inEuropean style and were named after the royalpalaces of Europe. Methwold was a symbol ofBritish brutalities in India which continued to hauntthe Indians even after the British departure. Lateron, the Methwold Estate became a witness to manyimportant historical events which beleaguered it. Itwas here on 14th August, 1947, that Vanita, wife ofWee Willie Winkie entered into a labour pain at atime when M.A. Jinnah announced the midnightbirth of a Muslim Nation (p. 111).

Saleems telepathic power brought him manyliberties as well as problems. He took full advantageand whored all over Karachi, toured India, andimproved his marks by cheating. Concurrently it was with this magical faculty that Saleem spied on hismother and aunt and created a horrifying time forhimself. His telepathy was also responsible fordepriving him, to some extent, from the readerssympathy, as he betrayed Sheikh Mujibur Rehmanof Bangladesh to the Pakistani enemy and also the

remaining Midnights Children to their murderers.By projecting Amina Sinai, Saleems mother, as abreeder of sinner, Rushdie converted his hero into aShakespearean Hamlet. He started spying on his




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mother due to her regular disappearance after a socalled wrong number telephone call, and finally

managed to scratch her dating with his ex-husbandNadir Khan, a notorious Communist Party handout(p. 216) in the Pioneer Caf in an objectionableposition with hands longing for touch, handsoutstretching tensing quivering demanding to be-but always at last jerking back (p. 217). LikeHamlet, Saleem did not act quickly and sufferedfrom the same To be or not to be question. In orderto overcome from this deplorable state, he startedcommunicating with the midnights children,through his magical powers of telepathy. It was inthis telepathic meeting that Saleem encountered

Shiva, the real son of Ahmad and Amina Sinai. Thecase of Saleems multiple parents could be seen inthe way that India possessed multifarious cultures.Saleem represented the nose and Shiva the knees:

So there were knees and a nose, a noseand knees. In fact, all over the new India,the dream we all shared, children werebeing born who were only partially theoffspring of their parents the children ofmidnight were also the children of thetime : fathered, you understand, by

history. (p. 118).

Shiva was a leader of a criminal gang of Bombay and wanted to stake a claim on Saleems gang on thebasis of his birth time at exactly midnight, butSaleem rejected it with contempt and ignited histemper. Shiva was a dictator who used to say :Everybody does what I say or I squeeze the shit outathem with my knees (p. 220).

The different Midnights Children representedthe variegated religions and culture prevalent inIndia. They were a sort of many headed monster,

speaking in myriad tongues of Babel the veryessence of multiplicity (p. 229). In the course ofevents, Saleem witnessed two acts of humiliation.The first mutilation was the result of his Geography-




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cum-Gymnastic teacher Emil Zagallo, who was athreat for his students. He hated the Indians and

called them savages and bead-lovers in return, thestudents called him Pagal-Zagal, Crazy Zagallo (p.230). He used to cite examples of Indian map withreference to Saleems face. In the face of the uglyape you dont see the whole map of India? Hereferred to Saleems chin as Deccan peninsulahanging down! He exaggerated to say that thevarious birth marks on the right ear is East Wing;and the horrible stained left cheek, the West!Remember, stupid boys: Pakistan is a stain on theface of India (pp.232-233). He then pulled out abunch of hair from his head and for this he was

terminated from his service.

Thereafter we witnessed a crack in theMidnights Childrens forum, as no one listened toSaleem and everyone was engaged in his or her ownaffair. This disintegration occurred on the day theChinese came down over the Himalayas to humiliatethe Indiansfauj. (p. 254). This undermining createdvarious divisions linguistic, economic and regional these divisions again fell in line with the variousregional and cultural divisions to be found in India. Thus the conference of Midnights Children turned

into a hotch-potch. Saleems pleading for unity fellon deaf ears. This loss of Saleem was the gain ofShiva. This rivalry between the two is done byRushdie in to highlight the proliferating tensionbetween the two neighbouring countries India andPakistan Midnights Children has succeeded in itsattempt to provide its readers with a possiblealternative hermeneutics of history.

In the meantime, Saleem activated his telepathicpower in order to spy on Lila Sabarmatis affair withCatrack, in order to teach his mother the outcome ofadultery. Saleem decided to plot the murder ofCatrack by cutting the news of Indias past historicalevents from various newspapers which appeared likethis




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COMMANDER SABARMATI (My noteread)

WHY DOES YOUR WIFE GO-TO COLABA

CAUSEWAY ON SUNDAY MORNING?(p.260)

He did this in order to create fresh news which would go into the making of another historicalincident. He passed on this piece of note toCommander Sabarmati, who in a bit of rage shot hiswife and her illicit lover.

The manner in which Saleem uses the past

historical news to reconstruct a new melodramatichistory is highly imaginative and Rushdie needs tobe congratulated for this cutting up of history . This incident shocked the entire nation andSabarmati became the most popular murder in thehistory of Indian jurisprudence (p 262) as publicsympathy started pouring in for this betrayedhusband. Comparisons were made and Catrack wascompared to Ravana whom Rama (CommanderSabarmati) brutally murdered for abducting his wife.But the matter came to a close as he was framedguilty by the Supreme Court and then the President

of India, as he was immured. The whole affair wasprojected in one of the newspapers which read likethis:

It is a theatre in which India will discoverwho she was, what she is, and what shemight become. (p. 262).

We have some more intertwining of nationalstories with Saleems personal story in the chapterentitled Revealations. The reader is told of themetamorphoses of Saleems friend Cyrush Dabush,from a school prodigy into the most successful holy

child in history (p. 269). Saleem links this suddentransformation of his friend to Lord KhusroKhurovand Bhagwan, a saint or a so calledmahaguru, who possessed everything anaeroplane, a luxury car, and a big fan following .




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Here, the narrative again moves in the vicinity of theMethwold estate. The Narlikar woman decided to

convert the Methwold estate into a mansion and topressurize Saleem to depart from there. Passingthrough this trauma, the Sinais received anotherslap of chagrin on their face, when they heard thenews of Hanifs suicide which led to a mourningperiod of forty five days. This period never allowedthe Sinais to recover as things were said and seenand done from which none of [them] ever recovered(p.272). The person held responsible for theirfurther dilapidation was none other than Hanifs wifePia, who did not think it proper to shed even a dropof tear over her husbands unnatural death. Instead

she appeared to be cool and calm. In order to bringher senses alive, Aadam and Pias mother-in-lawdecided to fast until she shed some tears. HereRushdie highlights the importance of paramountgrief to be expressed by a wife over his husbandsdeath in this traditional, male-biased Indian society.Aadam and Pias mother-in-law succeeded in theirattempt on the twentieth day of the mourning period.Here again, Rushdie displays his sense of humour bybringing an uncalled for sneeze into Pias nose,which consequently resulted in her flow of tears, andsome solace to her family members. Pias mother-in-

law then broke her fast and her plans of migrating toPakistan with her husband.

Interestingly after the death of Hanif, Aadamsaw a God in his dreams, though he had sttoppedbelieving in His existence. Nobody except MaryParura believed in this sudden revelation of AadamAziz, blaming it to his old age. Consequently, herefused to migrate to Pakistan. We are also toldabout the unhappy state of affairs encompassingIndia and Pakistan.

These Nehrus will not be happy until theyhave made themselves hereditarykings!. Ah unhappy Pakistan! How ill-served by her rulers. (p. 275)




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However, all this finally resulted in Aadams shifingto Srinagar from Agra in 1963, His arrival at

Srinagar spelt doom not only to him but to the entirenation owing to the theft of the Prophets hair on 28 thDecember, 1963. The agitation was muted with therecovery of the holy hair, five days after its theft. Butbefore it could be recovered, Aadam Aziz died on 1 January, 1964 as a result of his severe weaknessjust near the sanction of Acharya. After the incidenceof three drops of blood falling from his nose, he hadbecame an atheist. Ironically, his final moment cameat a holy place and soon after of Jawaharlal Nehru:

After the death of grandfather, Prime

Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru fell ill andnever recovered his health. This fatalsickness killed him on May 27th, 1964 (p.278).

This fictionalization of history or historification offiction has been done impeccably by Rushdie. Usingtoo much history could make a fiction a bit boring,but in Rushdies case that is not so. Writing on thisblend of history and fiction, R.C. Collingwood states:

For history, the object to be discovered isnot the mere event, but the thought

expressed in it. To discover that thoughtis already to understand it.24

In case of Rushdie the object to be discovered isnone else than his childhood and his lost idea ofnation i.e. India a nation which made Rushdie a bitnostalgic and it was in this nostalgy that Rushdiedrove the train of Indias past haulting them atimportant historical stations at a punctual time.Regarding such a historification of his fiction,D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke writes : Saleems andRushdies version of history is different from the

traditional, which is logical, imposes patterns, achain of cause and effect, is seemingly objective,definitive, unitary, repressive and closed. History inMidnights Children is, in a postmodern wayfragmented, provisional, openly subjective, plural,




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unrepressive, a construct, a reading.25 Seen fromthis angle, the history so constructed might be either

helpful in clearing the prejudices of an outsidereader or it might turn out to be a falsifying history. The latter was not to be found in RudhdiesMidnightsChildren.

References

Walcott, Derek, Collected Poems 1948-1984 (London: Faber & Faber, 1992),pp 346-350.

Watson, Hugh-Seton, Nations and States : An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism (Boulder, Col: WestviewPress, 1977), p. 5.

Gungwau, Wang, Australias Identity in Asia, Australia in the World :Perceptions and Possibilities, ed. Don Grant and Graham Seal (Perth: Black Swan Press, 1994), p. 240.

Cited from Benedict Andersons Imagined Communities in The PostColonial Studies Reader(London & New York : Routledge, 1983), p.124.

Bhabha, Homi, Introduction : Narrating the Nation inNation and Narration(London : Routledge, 1990), p. 4.

Renen, Ernest, What is a Nation? in Homi BhabhasNation and Narration,p. 19.

Nehru, Jawahar Lal, The Discovery of India (London : Meridian, 1960), p. 36.

Chaterjee, Partha, The Nation and Its Fragments : Colonial and Post-colonial Histories (Princeton NT : Princeton U.P., 1993), p. 94.

Pandit, M.L., An Interview with Salman Rushdie, New CommonwealthWriting (New Delhi : Prestige, 1996), p. 44.

Rushdie, Salman, Midnights Children, (London: Vintage, 1995 edition(1981), p. 2. All subsequent references to this novel are absorbed inthis chapter itself.

Wise, Gordon, Interview with Salman Rushdie, Gentleman, Feb. 1984, p.59.

Rushdie, SalmanImaginary Homelands (London: Grants Books, 1991), p. 17.

In an interview with B.B.C., Rushdie affirms his belief in a supernaturalworld. Network East, BBC 2, Sept. 24, 1988.




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Joshi, B. K., It may be long, but its Not Overwritten, The Times of India(1 Nov. 1981) , p. 8.

Jameson, Fredrick, Third World Literature in the Era of MultinationalCapitalism, Social Text, 15 (1986), p. 65.

Khilnani, Sunil, The Idea of India, (New Delhi : Penguin Books, 2004 ed.)(1997), p. xi.

Hobsbawn, Eric, Introduction : Inventing Traditions in The Invention ofTradition, ed. E. Hobsbawn & T. Ranger (Cambridge UniversityPress, 1983), p. 7.

Morris, Mervyn, Feeling, Affection, Respect in Disappointed Guests :Essays by African and West Indian Students ed. H. Tajfel and J.L.Dawson (Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 26.

Parameswaran, Uma, Salman Rushdies Early Fiction, (Jaipur : Rawat

Publications, 2007), p. 51.

Nyamubaya, F., On the Road Again : Poems During and After the National Liberation of Zimbabwe, 3rd ed. (Harare : Zimbabwe PublishingHouse, 1980), n.p.

Parameswaran, Uma, Salman Rushdies Early Fiction, p.

Ghosh, Tapan, Salman Rushdies Midnights Children : A ReadersCompanion, pp. 74-75.

Nandy, Ashis, The Intimate Enemy : Loss and Recovery of Self underColonialism (New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 2007 ed.) p. xi.

Cited from Satya Brat Singhs Autobiography as History : A Study ofMidnights Children in Salman Rushdies Midnights Children : A

Readers Companion, ed. Tapan Ghosh, p. 150.

Cited from Tapan Jyoti Banerjees Rushdie the Pathbreaker :Unique Use ofHistory and Myth in Midnights Children in Salman RushdiesMidnights Children : A Readers Companion, ed. Tapan Ghosh, p.162.


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