MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN

CHUTNIF'ICATION OF HISTORY:

MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN

"Midnight's Children is not history; it plays with historical facts ".

- R.K. Dhawan

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the father of Indian English novel, rightly

explains that "The purpose of history can be accomplished in a novel. The novelist is

not always bound by the chains of truth. He can, when he wants to resort to the use of

his imagination to achieve the effects he desires; for this reason the novel cannot

always take the place of histo ry... There is no need for everything in the novel to be

historical".'

But tfue to the fact that contemporary novels mirror the prevailing age,

Salman Rushdie's second novel Midnight's Children is a special kind of mirror that

reflects not only the external features of the age, but also the innermost intrigues, the

happenings, mysteries and conflicts that sway it. It is a novel that deals with the

events of national history such as Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Indian Independence,

the partition and its aftermath and the precarious conditions of the Emergency. It

reflects the characteristics of the postmodernist historiographic metafiction that

problematises the history. It tries to relate lives to public events and to explore the

limits of individuality in India. In order to achieve this, Rushdie creates the narrator-

protagonist of Midnight's Children, Saleem Sinai, as "a chronicler who provokes

much of the history he records and who enshrines in his personal heritage the identity

of India itself. He subsumes most matter of public record within hirn~elf".~ This

complex intertwining of public and private concerns mates in him "a narrator who,

quite literally, is the history that he record^".^

While discussing Rushdie's handling of history in Midnight's Children,

D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke writes, "Saleem's - and Rushdie's - version of history is

different firom the traditional, which is logical, imposes patterns, a chain of cause and

effect, is seemingly objective, definitive, unitary, repressive and closed. History in

Midnight's Children is, in a post- modern way, firagxented, provisional, openly

subjective, plural, unrepressive, a construct, a reading. It is different from European

mast er... narratives? As suggested by Goonetilleke, Rushdie in Midnight's Children

is into a consideration of the notion of history as 'a field of diverse human and

cultural possibility'. The novel has a diverse, diffuse and class divided relationship

with colonial culture and the English language. In the novel, the indigenous people of

the sub-continent are not allowed just 'walk-ons', but parts in the colonial history, as

in the novels of Paul Scott.

The interplay of the personal and national histories is the most significant

feature of the novel. Saleem Sinai, the narrator, being conscious of his historical

centrality, reminds his readers that he is mysteriously 'handcuffed to history'

(MC; p.3). And he finther continues that his destiny is 'indissolubly chained'

(MC; p.3) to that of his country. It can be said with much emphasis that Midnight's

Children is an autobiography of Saleem Sinai. It is recited in co-ordination with the

history of India during the period of the action. Though historical events are enthused

into the novel, it cannot be called a historical novel on par with Manohar Malgonkar's

The Princes and The Devil's Wind as the "events are not recreated but merely

recorded, not interpreted but merely inserted into the fabric of the narrative".' The

manner in which Salman Rushdie inserts the events like the assassination of Mahatma

Gandhi, Manekshaw Nanavati's case and the merger of the two wars with Pakistan, to

name a few for example, is a clear evidence that he inserts the facts for weaving his

story rather than interpret it into a historical novel.

Midnight's Children is not completely historical. But the random retelling of

the political history of India in Midnight's Children, according to Uma

Pararneswaran, "is connected to the personal history of Salcem Sinai in two ways:

through events in Saleem's life that are linked to contemporary events through

himself or one of his circle of friends or family; and through having significant events

in Saleem's life coinciding with events of historical imp~rtance".~ Thus Rushdie

employs an ingenious literary device.

The novel mirrors all the prevalent discords, confusion, misconceptions,

communal fallacies, religious prejudice, traditional values and modemising aspects

present in the lndian society with great clarity. They make the novel, in Maria Couto's

words "an extraordinary saga of epic dimensions".' Salman Rushdie's recital of the

theme in the novel is both unpredictable and unconventional. As it continues

unfolding the story, it evolves an exclusive form i.e., 'the discovered form'8. Usage of

this f6rm in the novel "exploits the formal features of a fairy tale, the romance, the

confession, the anatomy, the novel, the epic and some other forms like the journalistic

and the purely fantasticw9. The novel judiciously combines these forms paving way

for the 'the micro-macro symbiosis"0.

Midnight's Children is an extraordinary novel that incorporates the lndian

past with its pantheon, its epics, and its wealth of folklore and fairy tales; and at the

same time plays a role in the tumultuous Indian present. It evolves a distinct role of

historical processes and their roles in the novel. Many fictional writers had depicted

the momentous freedom struggle, but to Rushdie they appear 'anaemic and dull'".

Rushdie himself feels that the freedom movement in India was "not merely a political

struggle; but an all-pervasive experience that became a part of the life of almost all

the sensitive and enlightened 1ndians"l2. He finds lndian fiction to be inadequate in it.

Rushdie supplements the inadequacies, by presenting history innovatively.

Though some critics are of the opinion that the novel and the characters portrayed

therein are allegorical in nature, Rushdie is of the view that they are n~etaphorical and

the metaphors used are from history. "The children in Midnight's Children become

more a metaphor than allegory, a representation of hope and potential

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

book between his life and history are not allegorical ones, they're circ~rnstantial".'~

Rushdie presents the autobiography of his protagonist Saleem Sinai by catering to his

innovative imagination. He configures it inextricably to the different facets of

historical events in India. It is this feature that provides unity to the novel. Keith

Wilson is of the opinion that "The image of the writer as both master and victim of

public and private material, which he has been formed by,,in the past; and is himself

attempting to form in the present, dominates Midnight's ~hildren".'~

All the historical events mentioned in the novel have either a direct or indirect

reference to the history of Saleem Sinai. There are certain evenls which have no direct

link, but are still mentioned in the backdrop. They are mentioned therein as just

instances which contribute to the history of the country. Rushdie interweaves the

national and domestic history with sequences interspersed here and there. It adds up to

the whole quite meticulously and reflects a delightful recourse that Rushdie adopts.

To quote his own words, "You cannot separate the two. They interpenetrate and that

is how the writer needs to examine them, the one in the context of other"."

The narrative of Midnight's Children traverses through the pre-

Independence, partition and post-Independence eras of contemporary Indian history.

It mingles therein the experiences of three generations of the Sinai family. Saleem

Sinai successllly fuses the public events with his personal life and that of his family.

The journey undertaken by his grandparents and later his parents from Kashmir to

Amritsar and fiom there to Agra and fiom Agra to Delhi is a progress that occurs

simultaneously with that of the Indian struggle for Independence from Jallianwala

Bagh to the partition of India. As R.S. Pathak has rightly observes, "Midnight's

Children is Rushdie's interpretation of a period of about seventy years in India's

modern history dealing with the events leading to the partition and be~ond". '~ In the

novel, it appears that the role of Dr. Aadam Aziz, Saleem Sinai's grandfather, is

instrumental in juxtaposing the old and the new - the myth ridden fabulous past on

one hand and the modernism on the other, both bearing their own idiosyncrasies.

The dominant theme of the novel, the collision of public and private histories,

begins itself with the first meeting of Salem's grandparents, Dr. Aadam Aziz and

Naseem. When Dr. Aadam Aziz is called upon to treat Naseem, daughter of

landowner Ghani, he is allowed to get only partial glimpses of his patient and future

bride, through a perforated sheet which symbolically anticipates the fragmented

history of India that is yet to unfold. The day Dr. Aadarn Aziz gets to see Naseern

Ghani's face is the day the world war ends. To quote Uma Partimeswaran, "Just as the

First World War ended after four years of action on different geographical fronts, Dr.

Aadam Aziz's three years courting of Naseem through doctoring different parts of her

body ended with a face-to-face confrontation that augured a fruithl fi~ture"."?'he link

might be purely coincidental; but would be related in having significance at the

personal level. It seems that Rushdie links the two events to illustrate the ways in

which human beings rely on their individual experiences to make sense of abstract

historical events. As Saleem claims that such historical coincidences have littered and

perhaps befouled his family's existence in the world.

Dr. Aadarn Aziz's quest for independence and identity are likened to that of

the struggle for freedom. After his marriage, he takes his bride to Amritsar. He is

quick to reject the Rowlatt Act banning political agitation, He is shown to be a

spectator of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Rushdie is accu~ate about the historical

facts he uses; for example, he relates, "Aziz penetrates the heart of the crowd, as

Brigadier R.E. Dyer arrives at the entrance to the alleyway, followed by fifty white

troops ... Brigadier Dyer issues a command ... Brigadier Dyer's fifty men put down their

machine-guns and go away. They have fired a total of one thousand six hundred and

fiAy rounds into the unarmed crowd. Of these, one thousand five hundred and sixteen

have found their mark, killing or wounding some person" (MC; pp. 4 1-42).

This incident is explicitly informative about the quality of Rushdie's handling

of history. He makes historical events of personal significance to Saleem by involving

a member of his family in the event. The chance sneeze that pushes Aadarn Aziz to

the ground and saves his life also leaves a permanent bruise on his chest and turns him

virtually into a literal bearer of history, Further the wound is symbolic of the wounds

received by some millions of Indians during the pre-Independence days. Rushdie's

sarcastic humour in attempting to merge the grand and the trivial is evident in the way

he links the historical Jallianwala Bagh incident to the itching of Dr. Aadam Aziz's

nose.

Another point is that everything that happens in Saleem's life has some

significance. Uma Pararneswaran aptly remarks, "This incident; for instance, is related

to Saleem's life at a later point: it could be a foreshadowing of another Jallianwala

Bagh (Emergency) under another Brigadier Dyer (Mrs. andh hi)"."

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre is an eye-opener for Dr.Adam Aziz. The

impact of the senseless massacre is not just emotional in Dr.Adam Aziz, but is

transformed into a desire for positive action. He associates himself with Mian

Abdullah or the Humming bird, the founder of Free Islamic Convocation. This

Convocation counteracted the Muslim League's designs of partitioning the country

which further strengthened Aadam's secular ideals. He says; "1 started off as a

Kashmiri and not much of a Muslim, then I got a bruise on the chest that t m e d me

into an Indian" (MC; p. 47). His close interaction with Mian Abdullah infuses a zest

in Dr. Aadam Aziz which grows into an 'optimism epidemic' (MC; p. 46); which has

already been pervading the hearts of all liberal Indians. The word 'epidemic' suggests

that the hope inspired by Mian Abdullah is contagious, widespread and potentially

dangerous. But the narrator comments that "Mian Abdullah was a false start for a lot

of optimistic people" (MC; p. 81). In the early 1940s, religious strife is beginning to

fill the air, and that tension takes violent shape in the form of the crescent knives that

kill Mian Abdullah. The knives symbolically destroy any hope for a unified India

during the post-Independence era. The policies of Sheik Abdullah, the progenitor of

Mian Abdullah, reflected his inclination towards Gandhi's undivided India; and

disinclination towards the ideologies of the Muslim League. The original, lived long

aRer Independence; while his image in the novel is assassinated.

The gruesome death of Mian Abdullah at the hands of the Muslim Leaguers

appears to bring the optimistic epidemic also to a premature and disillusioned end.

Though Dr. Aadam Aziz is thoroughly shaken by Mian Abdullah's murder, he

continues with his social activities of serving millions of poverty-stricken, exploited

people. The change of circumstances from 1919 to 1942 does not violate the

consciousness of Dr. Aadam Aziz, who settles down at A g a and begins his family.

Prof. Madhusudhana Rao has rightly points out, 'The shifting of history from 1919 to

1942 with a clarion call for Quit India Movement acts as a changing landscape

without ever impinging on the consciousness of Dr. Aadarn Aziz and his three

daughters, Alia, Mumtaz and Emerald, and his sons Hanif and Mustapha to any

greater degree".19

The personal link provided in the story at this juncture, is that of Nadir Khan,

secretary to Mian Abdullah, who escapes the assassins and seeks refuge at Aadarn

Aziz's house. He marries Aadam Aziz's second daughter Mumtaz and later divorces

her by writing 'talaq' thrice and escapes. Parallelism can be drawn to the

disintegration of Mumtaz's marriage and the dropping of the atom bomb on

Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Uma Parameswaran relates, "The storm that

mushrooms out of Reverend Mother on finding her daughter still a virgin is by

implication at least as toxic as the radio-active mushroom that enveloped

~ i r o s h i m a " . ~ ~ Mumtaz's parents in turn marry her off to Ahmed Sinai, lover of Alia.

She is named Amina Sinai and the couple move to Delhi where their life is in close

proximity to fantasy.

Rushdie strongly insists on mingling reality and fantasy in his novel and it is

the most significant aspect of his style in presenting history. Saleern Sinai frequently

talks about the divisions between fantasy and reality in the mind; but in the novel no

such divisions exist. Citing an example, Lifafa Das, the peep show man, symbolically

tries to capture the whole reality in his box. The narrative technique is that Rushdie

strategically utilises Lifafa Das to project reality using a fictional mode. To quote

Salman Rushdie's words, "I genuinely believed that my overt use of fabulation would

make it clear to any reader that I was not attempting to falsiFy history, but to allow a

fiction to take off from hi~tory".~'

The incident with Lifafa Das represents another manifestation of the tension

between pluralism and singularity. Lifafa's peepshow box literally symbolizes the

concept of looking at the world through a multiplicity of perspectives and viewpoints.

The mob that m o u n d s him, however, can only see Lifafa's religion and nearly kills

him because of its singular view. The allusion in these chapters to Ravana, a many-

h d e d demon from the lndian epic TheRamyanr, emphasizes the frightening

specter of mob mentality. The incident with the peepshow box exemplifies the

nationwide tension already threatening to tear India apart along religious lines. That

tearing will, of course, become literal once India gets divided into the Hindu-majority,

secular India and Muslim Pakistan. Thus the consequent physical division is

suggested.

. On June 4, 1947, the day Earl Mountbatten of Burma announces the partition

of India and declares the date for the transfer of power, Ahmed and Amina Sinai leave

for Bombay by the Frontier Mail. On reaching Bombay, Ahmed Sinai purchases a

villa at the Methwold Estate and settles down. The small-scale property transfer at

Methwold's Estate clearly corresponds to the larger political situation, as Great

Britain prepares itself to transfer sovereign power to the independent governments of

India and Pakistan. Both the transfers are incomplete and complicated. Independent

India must now deal with the cultural legacy of British colonialism which is bound to

remain active long after the British vacate the country. Hence all the inhabitants of

Methwold's Estate have to live with the physical reminders of the Estate's former

owner. The British continue to exert a powerful influence over Independent India, as

symbolized by the unconscious ways the Methwold residents begin conforming to

Methwold's customs. Methwold's nostalgia for his Estate, in turn, echoes the wide

scale nostalgia felt by the British upon leaving the former 'crown' of their colonial

empire. The final discarding of the hairpiece by Methwold revealing his baldness

humorously depicts the hollowness of British pomp and vanity.

Prior to tlus Vanita, wife of Wee Willie Winkie, the entertainer at Methwold

Estate, is seduced by Methwold. She gives birth to a ten-pound baby boy, just at the

stroke of midnight, in the same nursing home as Amina Sinai does. The drama that

unfolds on the evening of 14Ih August, 1947 in the partitioned land is reduced to a

comic countdown, as the narrator's family await his birth.

In order to understand the significance of his birth, Saleem reminds the

reader of everything that came before it and all the family history that went into

making Saleem who he is. However, after accumulating all this momentum, it

becomes clear that the history is actually someone else's history, It belongs to Shiva,

the boy with whom Saleern gets switched at birth. Thus the narrator is not actually

related at all to the people whose stories he has been detailing so meticulously. In

actuality it is the story of Shiva that has to be considered the parallel to Indian history.

But Saleern impinges providentially and makes it his own. It is an act that

symbolically reflects Britain's continuous influence over its main colony, even after

its withdrawal. In a way it might also be 'a palimpsest', l2 a literary device used by

Salmah Rushdie quite lavishly in his later novels Shame and The Moor's Last Slgh.

But the ultimate outcome in the novel, after the physical disintegration of Saleem,

clearly reflects the emergence of secular India. It is reflected in Ganesh (Aadam

Sinai), the son of Shiva and Parvati reclaiming his rightful place in history.

Significantly, Aadam Aziz discovers that the sacred perforated sheet has been gnawed

full of moth holes. As one of the central symbols of Saleern's story, the partial

damage of the perforated sheet seems to bode poorly for the truthfulness of the

narrative as a whole.

However, Saleem remains the narrator of this tale and narrates his family's

history as if it were his own. It highlights one of the narrative's central themes that

truth is created and shaped, not fixed and static. Rushdie reveals his attitude to reality

in the novel on several occasions. The narrator observes that "Reality can have

metaphorical content; that doesn't make it less real" (MC; p. 278). His views clearly

assert that "...the novelist's truth is different from that of the historian. The former is

obliged to mix facts with fiction".23 Regardless of whether Saleem is Ahrned and

Amina's biological son, he is raised in their family as their own. He enjoys all the

privileges and problems that the birthright entails. Saleem can rightfully claim the

history he has told as his own, because he believes it to be so. The truth of the

situation, therefore,.seems relative.

That William Methwold, an Englishman, is the original father of Saleem

clearly establishes him as the perfect embodiment of modem India. The legacy of

British colonialism has undoubtedly shaped the newly Independent India, just as

William Methwold has undeniably shaped Saleem. It is also important to note that by

switching the nametags, Mary Pereira, Saleern's ayah, makes a distinct decision. She

attempts to redress the vast social divide that separates the rich h m the poor. Saleem,

the child of a poor Indian woman and an English father, brought up by Muslim

parents turns out to be an extraordinarily apt representative of the new Indian nation.

It is a literalization of the metaphor used by Tariq Ali when he writes that "...the new

nation was ... Indian in its colour, composition and make-up and its pedigree was

unmistakably ~ r i t i s h . ~ ~

Saleem Sinai, born at the emergence of Indian Independence, was ordained to

crumble into as many pieces as there are citizens of India, upon his demise. Hence

Saleem Sinai contrives to embody the totality of India within his singular self. The

concept that an individual could possibly personify a brimming, heterogeneous, and

myriad nation like India captures one of the novel's crucial concerns- the

apprehension between the particular and the profuse. The spirited association between

Saleem's individual life and the cumulative life of the nation suggests that public and

private are bound to influence one another. But it remains indiscernible as to whether

they can totally correspond with one another. Throughout the novel, Saleem is seen

grappling to contain all of India within himself - to cram his personal story with the

history of his country - only to fall apart and collapse at the end of his attempt. On

parallel lines, India is also shown to be grappling to contain the various divisive

forces within herself. Salman Rushdie through this might be suggesting the imminent

danger of India disintegrating if the effort to contain the communal differences fails.

The carnage of the communal war is relegated to the background of Saleem

Sinai's birth - where cities are burning and the sounds of birth join the din. The

protagonist later records his own birth as "...all over the new India, the dream we all

shared, children were being born who were only partially the offspring of their parents

- the children of midnight were also the children of the time, fathered, you

understand, by history. It can happen. Especially, in a country which is itself a sort of

dream" (MC; p.159). Rushdie claims, "...But I also wanted them to be not the children

of their parents; I wanted them to be the children of the times".25

Salman Rushdie treats partition as a theme in a unique and imaginative

manner. He voluntarily breaks away from the previous, conventional Indian fictional

style of narrating the events of partition in chronological sequence. He uses a

metaphorical style to lead the story to a land of fantasy and entertainment. But the

undercurrent rushes out forcefully producing a rather chilling and horrifying effect.

The novel is comic in perception and metaphorical in presentation. Yet Rushdie

analyses the partition with immense seriousness. The multi-faceted dimensions of the

connections between history and the individual often operate simultaneously and in

conjunction with one another in this phase of the novel. The protagonist portrays

Rushdie's perception of history as a dynamic and multidimensional force in human

life.

At the very outset, after having given the date of his birth, the narrator moves

to his thirty-first birthday. He then dives deep into the past only to return to the

present, and then to embark upon the future. This break in chronology reveals that the

author's intention is not to give a record of events in the order of their occurrence. He

uses it to project the basic historical truth interacting with the life of the individual.

This in turn focuses on "the connection between public affairs and private lives".26

The story traces various events in the life of the protagonist that synchronize with the

events in the history of India. The parallel is designed to allow an understanding of

the individual's life in terms of historical forces.

Saleem, who is in search of individual identity, makes trials to rewrite the

entire history of his times from 'random shards of memory'.27 He does not distinguish

between formal facts and gossips, history and legends as he believes in the fact that

"Sometimes legends make reality and become more useful than the facts" (MC; p.57).

He uses chronological data quite freely and blends history with fiction and fantasy. It

brings his technique of magic realism, which he uses in most of his novels, into the

spotlight. He allows stories to overlap the recorded events, in order to preserve the

parallelism drawn between his life and the history of India.

IJ P\-r

Rushdie's trials to interpret history provide various theories in approaching

time and momentary situations. Rushdie's keen and mature historical sense is brought

to the fore. As T.S. Eliot remarks the historical sense "involves a perception not only

of the past, but of its present"?8 Not only that, it also makes a person aware of his

place .in the sphere of time. In other words, it makes him aware of his 'own

conten~~oraneity' .~~ Rushdie does not undermine the importance of the past. What he

writes while commenting on Indira Gandhi's assassination, in Midnight's Children:

"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it"; 'O he affirms in Shame: "Men

who deny their pasts become incapable of thinking them real"." Rushdie's concept of

history includes a composite time which consists of past, present and future.

The treatment of time, which is relevant to the discussion of history, is very

interestingly dealt with in Midnight's Children. In spite of a continuous insistence

on clock-time, the novel treats time-history in different ways like the linear time, the

cosmic or circular time and the existential time. Firstly, linear time is evident as is

clearly seen in one of the instances, when Padma demands forward progress: "But

here is Padma at my elbow, bullying me back into the world of linear narrative, the

universe of what-happened-next" (MC; p.44). Another variety of time, the cosmic or

circular time is apparent with the birth of Aadarn Sinai. The announcement of his

birth is almost an exact repetition of the announcement of Salem's birth, twenty-

eight years earlier: "He was born in Old Delhi ... once upon a time. No that won't do,

there's no getting away from the date: Aadam Sinai anived at a night-shadowed slum

on June 25', 1975. And the time? The time matters, too. As I said: at night. No, it's

important to be more...on the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact" (MC; p. 586).

Existential time (time in the mind which allows an escape from time-history)

is also dealt with in equal dexterity when narrating the journey of Saleem Sinai and

his three friends through the Sundarbans. As they approach the jungle, Ayooba kills

Father Time and leaves him dead in a rice-paddy field. They enter "the jungle which

is so thick that history has hardly ever found the way in. The Sundarbans: it swallows

them up" (MC; p. 501). Once inside the jungle, they leave behind history and time

too. Further, they become victims of 'timeshifting sorcery of the forest'

(MC; p.513). It is only when they emerge from the Sundarbans, that time and history

return and the reader realises that their trial has lasted for seven months.

Whatever the time sequence followed, Rushdie does not lose his grip over the

storyline and proceeds uninterrupted while reciting the story. Talking about the arrival

of the narrator-protagonist into the world on the midnight of 1 s ' ~ August, 1947; he

proceeds with descriptions of the effects of partition in a lighter vein. He fiuther

informs of the exchange that takes place at the nursing home which results in the

narrator Saleem, growing up in the lap of luxury in the Sinai household while the real

Sinai baby, Shiva, grows up in the slums. Discussing the mechanics behind the novel,

Rushdie observes; "...originally I thought there'd be only one child - the idea of

having the exchange of children came later. That was partly because I thought of a

sort of dualism between the children they represent wealth and poverty, reason and

unreason, peace and war and so forth".'*

Saleem's significance was confirmed by a prime minister's letter, a newspaper

photo, and the predictions of a holy man. He says, "News papen celebrated me;

politicians ratified my position. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote: 'Dear Baby Saleem, My

belated congratulations on the happy accident of your moment of birth.. . We shall be

watching over your life with the closest attention; it will be, in a sense, the mirror of

our own"' (MC; p.167). At the same time, Saleem is perfectly aware of his features,

particularly his enormous nose, which he willingly describes as ugly. Salem's

features, however, are more than just his own. He has his grandfather's nose and eyes,

and yet he is not biologically related to Aadam Aziz, He has two birthmarks, which he

describes as being on the west and east sides of his face, and a nose shaped like a

cucumber. His face resembles, to some degree, a map of the Indian subcontinent.

Salem struggles to contain everything within his grasp. From his father's alcoholism

to the petty affairs of the estate, Saleem wants to claim it all as his. Saleem has placed

himself at the center of his world. Once again Rushdie states, "What I meant was that

Saleem's whole persona is a childlike one, because children believe themselves to be

the centre of the universe, and they stop as they grow up; but he never stops, he

believes - at the point where he begins the novel - that he is the prime mover of these

great events".33

When baby Saleem falls ill with typhoid Dr. Schaapsteker, who has spent his

life studying snakes, offers a remedy made of snake poison. Having no other option,

his parents accept it and administer it to baby Saleern. The poison saves Saleem's life

and the fact that Dr. Schaapsteker could save Saleem's life by using snake poison

represents the notion that the line separating good and evil is never as stark or clear.

Saleem continues the story in the summer of 1956. By the time he reaches the

age of nine, Saleem becomes acutely aware of the expectations surrounding him. One

afternoon, Saleern seeks refuge in the washing chest because of the ridicule and

mockery he faces from his classmates. When Saleem's mother discovers him hiding

in the washing chest, she punishes him to one day of silence. During that quiet day,

Saleem begins to hear voices rattling in his head, which he compares to the divine

voices heard by Mohammed and Moses. The next day, he tells the entire family that

he could hear angels talking to him. "By sunrise, 1 had discovered that the voices

could be controlled - I was a radio receiver, and could tune the volume down or up; I

wuld select individual voices; I could even, by an effort by will, switch off my

newly-discovered inner ear" (MC; p. 226). Everyone grows angry with Saleem, and

his father hits him so hard that Saleem permanently loses the sense of hearing in his

left ear.

During the summer of 1956, language marches fill the city streets, with

protesters demanding that Bombay be partitioned along linguistic lines, dividing the

Marathi speakers from the Gujarati speakers. At the same time, various languages and

voices fill alee em's head. The voices are not angels, but telepathy. The narrator says,

"It was telepathy; but also more than telepathy ... the inner monologues of all the so-

called teeming millions, of masses and classes alike, jostled for space within my head.

In the beginning ... there was a language probl em... 1 understood only a fraction of the

things being said within the walls of my skull" (MC; pp. 232-233). Beneath the

teeming babble of different languages, Saleem says he could hear a purer, intelligible

thought-form, greater than words. There may be many differences between one

language and another, but these differences are superficial. There is a universal thread

of unity that unites them. This truth is reflected through the essential nature of

communication that Saleem has discovered. The babble of voices in Saleem's head

makes an argument for plurality in a country that is struggling to remain united. The

citizens of India constitute an enormous range of humanity, and Salem illustrates that

wide range by travelling from the mind of a cab driver directly into the thoughts of the

Prime'Minister.

Saleem also hears the voices of the other midnight's children stating simply

'1'. Still afraid of his father's wrath, Saleem keeps these voices a secret. He puts his

power in a historical context, noting that at the time of his discovery, India was

developing its Five Year Plan. He is able to move into the mind of the Prime Minister

Nehru, calling religious pundits to discuss the auspicious time to implement the plan.

He also explains that instead of using his gift for the betterment of the country, he

cheated in his classes, kept his gift a secret, and essentially frittered it away.

Saleern describes how India became organized into states and territories, based

upon common language. India had been divided into fourteen states and six centrally-

administered territories. The boundaries of these states were formed by the walls of

words, but not by any natural features of the terrain. Bombay, however, remained a

multilingual state. As a result, in February 1957, a massive parade of demonstrators

marched through the city, seeking a partition of the state along linguistic lines. While

the children of the Methwold Estate are watching the parade, Saleern recites a rhyme

in Gujarati to placate the crowd. "Soo che? Sam che! Danda leke maruche! " (How

are you?-] am well! - I'll take a stick and thrash you to hell!) (MC; p.265). The crowd

moves on, singing his offensive rhyme, until they run into a parade of pro-Gujarati

marchers. Throats are slit, and in the end, the state of Bombay is partitioned. Salem

claims that he is the cause for all these incidents. "In this way I became directly

responsible for triggering off the violence which ended with the partition of the state

of Bombay, as a result of which the city became the capital of Maharashtra - so at

least I was on the winning side" (MC; pp. 265-266).

The states reorganisation in 1955, which can be likened to the birth of the

MCC (Midnight's Children Council), on linguistic basis within a decade was the

second division the country underwent. While demanding freedom from the British,

Indians pledged their unity. But very soon, they demanded states reorganisation

depending on their respective languages. They were sure of their growth and

development under a common lingua franca. Siiiman Rushdie relates, "And on my

tenth birthday, I stole the initials of Metro Cub Club - which were also the initials of

the touring English cricket team and gave them to the new Midnight Children's

Conference, my very own M.C.C" (MC; p. 287). Very soon, Saleem's position as the

leader of the MCC is ignored and each member tries to embark on histher career using

hisher own talent. When finally Salem Sinai tries to re-discipline them, they revolt

and refuse to accept his leadership. The author might have used this metaphor to hint

at the possible disintegration of the country, if the same trend of selfishness continues.

The 1957 election proved to be a shock to the All India Congress Party, which

till then kept winning all elections with a huge majority. But the 1957 election saw the

emergence of the Communist Party as the single largest opposition party, thereby

reducing the popularity of the Congress. Similarly, in Midnight's Children, the 1957

elections bring to the fore Shiva, another Midnight's child. He is a strong contender to

the top post of the MCC. Once Shiva enters the scene raising the banner of revolt,

Saleem Sinai's popularity among the MCC members wanes. Here Salman Rushdie

offers an insight into the character of Shiva, Saleern's main antagonist. Shiva is

named after the god of destruction, whereas Saleem represents Brahma, the god of

creation. The two boys represent destruction and creation, violence and restraint,

respectively. Shiva's anger and his attraction to destruction are inescapably related to

his upbringing - an upbringing that was meant for Salem's destruction as well as that

of the other midnight's children.

The extensively - anticipated and predicted arrival of the other midnight's

children is an imaginative moment in the novel. The children are full of figurative

significance, from their number, originally 1,001, to their very existence. As Salem

remarks, they mark a break from the past; and perhaps an attempt on the part of

history to bring something new into the future. "Midnight's children can be made to

represent many h g s ... they can be seen as the last throw of everyhng antiquated

and retrogressive in our myth-ridden nation, whose defeat was entirely desirable in

the context of a modernizing twentieth century; or as the true hope of lieedom, which

is now forever extinguished(MC; p.278). Their powers range from the fantastic to

the grotesque. They are an ambiguous group - fortunate and scarred, poor and rich. As

such, they are a perfect reflection of India itself. In their sheer numbers and range of

powers, they are an argument on behalf of plurality. They are the children of the

country, and they represent its range and scope.

Sa lem notes that 1,001 is a magical number. Scheherazade, the heroine

ofThe Arabian Nights, tells 1,001 stories in order to delay her execution. As the

archetypal storyteller, she provides a fitting model for Saleem's own narrative project.

The number is also a palindrome, which means it can be read both backward and

forward. In this way, the number 1,001 represents the reversal of Saleem and Shiva's

fortunes. In whatever manner the reversal might have occurred, Saleem firmly

believes that he is responsible for the incidents that took place in Methwold Estate.

Certain incidents like the Sabarmati-Catrack affair and Cyrus Dubash's acquired

godliness are all claimed by Salem to be his doings.

Saleem discovers the affair between Mr. Sabarmati's wife Lila Sabarmati and

Mr. Homi Catrack, residents of the Methwold Estate. He discloses it to Mr. Sabarmati

by pasting letters cut from newspapers to frame his letter of accusation. He does this

with an intention of teaching his unfaithful mother a lesson. Saleem admits to "cutting

up history to suit my nefarious purposes" (MC; p.360) and to this being his first

attempt at rearranging history. As Dieter Riemenschneider opines, "Saleem's act

reveals the absurdity of the historian's claim to render history objectively; rather,

history can be bent to serve subjective and individual purposes".34 On coming to know

the affair, Mr. Sabarmati shoots Mr. Homi Catrack from point blank range and

submits himself to the police. The case, in the story, draws a lot of support for the

wronged husband.

Salman Rushdie draws a comparison for this incident from Kawas Manekshaw

Nanavati, an officer working in the Indian Navy who had killed his fiiend, Prem

Ahuja, on the pretext of betrayal. His wife Sylvia confessed to her husband of her

illicit relationship with Ahuja. It angered Nanavati so much that he approached and

murdered Ahuja directly and submitted himself to the authorities. The historical

perception shows that Commander Sabarmati's h id symbolizes India's difficulties in

moving forward. The debate surrounding the commander's innocence pits traditional

and progressive values against one another. That a judge finds Sabarmati guilty

represents a victory for liberal progress, yet the favoured treatment he receives, along

with the fact that Lila is forced to abdicate custody of their children, seems to temper

that victory.

Another incident that drew the attention of the public was the emergence of

Cyrus Dubash, as Khusro Bhagwan, onto the national scene. An ordinary boy, a fiend

of Saleem, is suddenly thrust into the limelight by his ambitious mother. Visitors of

international reputation start frequenting Cyrus' place and his stature as a god man

attains international recognition. It is one such parody which Salman Rushdie tries to

depict through his novel.

Another important parody that is portrayed by Rushdie in a similar fashion is

Ayub Khan's seizure of power in Pakistan. Between 1958 and I964 Saleem is in the

forefront of political events in Pakistan. His uncle General Zulfikar plans General

Ayub Khan's military takeover of the country. Saleem witnesses the midnight

meeting of October 7, 1958 when Ayub Khan imposes Martial Law. "How we made

the revolution: General Zulfikar described troop movements; 1 moved pepper pots

symbolically while he spoke.. .In the movements performed by pepper pots etcetera,

one table-ornament remained uncaptured: a cream-jug in solid silver, which

represented the Head of State, President Iskander Mina; for three weeks Mina

remained President" (MC; p.403). When the General abducts President lskander

Mirza fiom his house and sends him exile abroad, Saleem is with his uncle and claims

that he has been responsible for the incident: "...not only did I overthrow a

government - I also consigned a President to exile" (MC; p.405).

As Ralph.J.Crane has rightly interprets, "Ayub Khan is a real historical figure,

but the events Saleem describes could not have happened quite as he describes them

because, as we know, Saleem is a fictional character, and could not have been present

as he suggests. However, Ayub Khan's seizure remains fictionally true...In other

words, whilst the narrative undoubtedly aspires to the condition of truth or reality, it is

ultimately, a fictional truth and not an historical

Rushdie makes Saleern not to participate in any historical event, either directly

or indirectly, during the four years after the military takeover of Pakistan. However,

Saleem records the important events like the acquisition of large-scale U.S. aid for

Pakistan and the worsening conditions between India and Pakistan. He further says

that India conquered Goa without any assistance from him.

While the infant India was struggling to find its moorings in the post-

Independent scenario, it was forced to engage itself in three wars in a quick

succession with its neighbours. These wars proved to be destabilising both

economically and psychologically.

Rushdie adopts a highly characteristic innovativeness in handling the three

wars and their outcome. He depicts the individual's role in a nation at war very

shrewdly marshalling a variety of possibilities. The link between the nation and the

personal events are numerous and pronouncedly marked with a disregard for realism.

This technique has been brilliantly mastered by Rushdie attesting it with his

customary, unrestrained ingenuity.

When the Indo-China war started, all the members of the Sinai family, except

Ahmed Sinai, were in Pakistan. On the afternoon of 9'h September 1962, Amina Sinai

was busy trying to cut her vermcas out of her feet with a sharp-ended file. This act

finds its concurrence in New Delhi, where Krishna Menon, the defence minister of

India, was threatening to cut off the Chinese in the Himalayan front by the use of

force. The Sinai family returns to Bombay on 16' September, I 962 to attend to the

ailing A b e d Sinai. The midnight's children answered the call of Saleern and this

optimistic approach is compared to the optimism of the Indian m y as it prepared to

confront the Chinese invasion. Similarly both the acts proved to be short lived and

illusory. Neeraja Mattoo remarks that Saleem's attempts to bring all the dissenting

forces within the midnight's children to tackle a national Emergency. According to

her, "The emotional integration of the family echoes the fervour of the country's

apparent emotional integration in the face of Chinese aggression".36The attempt ends

disastrously with all the midnight's children boycotting Saleern.

Salman Rushdie surreptitiously illustrates the intense view in retelling the

importance of an individual while reciting historical incidents. It simultaneously

mirrors the unprovoked attack of the Indian army by the Chinese on 25' October. The

attack results in the complete annihilation of the Indian army at the Thag La ridge.

The defeat mentioned herein signifies not the defeat of the Indian m y . But, it depicts

a weakening of the basic fabric of the nation due to betrayal. Nehru, the perceptive

Prime Minister of India of that period and the architect of the Hindi-Chini bhai bhai

festivity, had been gullible enough to accept even the Chinese annexation of Tibet in a

1954 agreement without settling the Indo-Tibetan border. Saleem's repeated attempts

to reconstitute the midnight's children's conference and their failure to answer his call

are likened to the deceit of China. The midnight's children's flight from Saleem is

similar to the Gurkhas and Rajputs fleeing from the attacking Chinese army.

The similarity between the nation swelling with confidence on defeating the

Chinese and the swelling of Saleem's sinuses is clearly evident. Saleern's nasal

passages were acutely inflamed and his situation was catastrophical. It easily draws

comparison with the attack of the Indian army under cover. On 20Ih November the

Indian forces were routed at Walong. When everyone feared that worst would happen

the Chinese withdrew, announcing ceasefire. Coincidentally, Saleern's sinus too is

cleared the same day. The clearance of sinus had robbed Saleem of his telepathic

power - the power to tune in to other midnight's children; and instead replaced it with

the acquisition of an extraordinary power of smell. India had also lost its power to

communicate its predicament to the world. Trying to undo the loss, India has risen as

a military power gaining a place in the world as a nation with independent nuclear and

missile capabilities.

On the other hand, the two wars between India and Pakistan are basically

different from that of the Indo-China war. The wars between India and Pakistan were

between two countries who had previously co-existed as a single nation before the

partition. The bitter feelings that were aroused during the partition were still

smouldering and the least friction was enough to ignite them to unfathomable

proportions. The conflagration that resulted due to the misunderstanding over the

~ a s h m i r issue proved that the partition was not a forgotten event.

Just before the Indo-Pak war begins, Saleem had been living in Pakistan. It is

then that he hears of his grandfather's death and he links it with Jawaharlal Nehru's

death. When Saleem is in Pakistan, he starts dreaming about Kashmir, connotating the

dream of all the Pakistanis. He attributes the dreams he had about Kashrnir to be

pouring out into the minds of the other Pakistanis. Saleem claims that the war of 1965

o c m e d for two reasons: "because I dreamed Kashmir into the fantasies of our rulers;

furthermore, [because] I remained impure, and therefore the war was to separate me

from my sins" (MC; p.471). Once again, Saleem claims personal responsibility for

large-scale, national events.

In the first chapter of the novel, Kashmir was presented as an heir to the

biblical Garden of Eden, with Aadam and Naseem playing the roles of Adam and Eve,

the world's first man and woman. In the Christian faith, Eden represents a vanished

perfection to which humans aspire yet can never attain on the physical, earthly plane.

Exhausted, Saleem yearns for a return to uncomplicated purity. However, just as

Adam and Eve can never return to Eden, Saleem cannot return to Kashrnir he

remembers through Aadam. That Kashmir does not exist anymore, a fact Saleem

himself hints at when he first describes Aadam's Kashmir and claims that "In those

days there was no army camp at the lakeside, no endless snakes of camouflaged

trucks and jeeps clogged the narrow mountain roads, no soldiers hid behind the crests

of the mountains past Baramulla and Gulmarg" (MC; p.5). Even at the beginning of

the novel, the beauty of Kashrnir is tainted by hindsight. In 191 5, the valley may have

seemed unchanged since the Mughal Empire, but by the time Saleem begins telling

his story, Kashmir has transformed irrevocably. Saleem's dreams remain a concrete

expression of the nostalgia and desire that fed India and Pakistan's struggle over

Kashrnir. Saleem's inability to recapture his lost Eden reflects the futility of the

unyielding struggle between India and Pakistan for control of the region.

Saleem also claims that the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965 was a personal Jihad, or

holy war against him. When the war broke out, it was with a hazy perception that the

public on either side acknowledged it. Just when the press' report on the

normalisation of ties between the two countries poured out; the unbelievable news of

war befbddled the two nations. According to Saleem's narration, his family is directly

the reason and victim of the happenings. The family's existence has become

grotesque, and Salem believes that Pakistan must be trying to drive out his wretched

family: "It was my firm conviction that the hidden purpose of the Indo-Pakistan war

of 1965 was nothing more or less than the elimination of my benighted family from

the face of the earth" (MC, p.469). Echoing the novel's earlier claims that creation

and destruction are intimately linked, Salem achieves purity in the "Land of the

Pure" (MC, p.427) through cataclysmic and utter devastation. The entire family

perishes in the ensuing bombing that occurs during the war and Saleem is thrown out

clinging on to the silver spittoon. He was left with a blank mind and a body with only

the silver spittoon as a source of link to his past. As prof. Madhusudhana Rao has

rightly observes, "With this catastrophic loss of family, Saleem's drift into anonymity

and listless silence naturally follow^".^'

At this juncture, Saleem transforms into a half-animal, half god-like figure.

Saleem cannot feel pain or emotion as he is relieved of his memory. It implies that a

connection to the past represents an essential part of being human. Saleem spends his

days sitting under a tree. He is free from the trials of his past. The monk like hairdo he

adopts, gives him an added air of religious solemnity. Once again, a melding of

religious traditions is witnessed, as Saleem comes to resemble both a Christian monk

and the figure of the Buddha. "In Rushdie's transliteration he (Saleem) achieved the

state of ~uddha"?~

The character of Saleem is moulded by Rushdie to' inhabit various levels of

existence. In spite of the identity crisis experienced by Saleem, he goes through the

phases, experiencing each to ultimately culminate in the spiritual consciousness.

"Saleem's quest for identity is a matter of his evolving consciousness in an lndian

ethos. It is at various levels, geographical, historical and psychological and intuitive

and finally culminates itself in finding the ultimate spiritual identification with the

Indian ~ n s c i ~ u s n e s s " . ~ ~

Saleem's story hardly skips a beat between the two wars, the 1965 Indo-

Pakistani war over Kashrnir and the 1971 conflict over Bangladeshi Independence.

The central role that politics and warfare played in the shaping of India and Pakistan's

history becomes increasingly evident. The violence escalates and grows larger in scale

as Saleem plays the dual roles of witness and active participant in the pillaging of

Dacca. "The Bangladesh war unmistakably moves Saleem as he feels pained at the

bruised psyche of the Indian subcontinent as a whole".40

At this point, informing the reader of the factual details of the military conflict

becomes one of the narrative's clear objectives. As Rushdie claims, it is a dangerous

endeavour on the part of the authors to attempt writing contemporary history. The fact

that writing about the previous day or the day before yesterday is not the same as

writing about facts that occurred sixty years ago. There is every chance of

perspectives being changed and occurrences being altered. "So the perspectives of the

book alter as they near the present and the later part of it is not written the same way

as the earlier part of it. It is written more flatly and more partially. And the

Bangladesh section of the book seems the most completely fabulated part of the

book".41 Rushdie meticulously shapes the character of Saleem who lists the names of

major generals and political leaders, not to mention the political events occurring in

India at the same time. Saleem's story at this point becomes a historical lesson as well

as a wartime memoir.

Saleem enters the Sundarbans to leave behind what he hais seen and done, yet

ironically manages to reclaim his memory there. In one of the novel's more tragic and

violent images, Saleem stumbles across the human pyramid of dying bodies,

comprising Eyeslice, Haimil, and Sonny Ibrahim. The bodies of his dying friends and

the description of Farooq's death demonstrate how images of the past can become

corrupted and deformed by the violence of the present. Time and age have only made

matters worse for the former children of Methwold's Estate. But Saleem is unable to

recollect his name. He carries his dying friend Shaheed, on his request, to a nearby

mosque. However, instead of finding God there, Shaheed finds himself being

wnsurhed by greedy ants. Though he cannot articulate words, Shaheed cries out not

only for his own death, but also for the thousands of other atrocities being committed

throughout the country. Shaheed's cry of agony, broadcast over the mosque

loudspeaker, comprises one of the novel's most chilling and brutal moments.

Shaheed's scream expresses the narrative outrage at the senseless deaths of thousands

of young men during the Indo-Pakistan war.

Saleem, unable to recollect his name, is left alone to tend to himself. He is a

bystander at one of the victorious war processions. The magicians, called in to

entertain the army, lead the procession. It is here that Parvati, the witch, notices

Saleern and calls him by his name. When she comes to know of his predicament, she

helps in transporting him to India through magic. She uses her sorcery to 'spirit'

Saleern from the war-fmnt in a wicker basket making him invisible and was brought

to the magician's slum. The narrator describes; "...when I returned to India, concealed

in a wicker basket, 'The Madam' was basking in the fbllness of her glo ry... On

Decemberl6th, 1971, I tumbled out of a basket into an India in which Mrs. Gandhi's

New Congress Party held a more-than-two-thirds majority in the National Assembly"

(MC; p.538).

Parvati magically transports Saleem from Dacca back to Bombay, to the

magician's ghetto where Picture Singh, a snake charmer, rules by rhetoric of justice.

As Abdul Razak Gurnah has rightly observes, "The magician's ghetto is a realization

in miniature of Nehm's dream of a plural secular community. In some respects, then

Picture Singh represents the myth of India that was about to be terminated by the

~ r n e r ~ e n c y " . ~ ~ When Pmati requests Saleem to marry her, he refhses and leave6 the

ghetto for his uncle Musthapha Aziz's house. After four hundred and twenty days he

returns to the magician's slum. The narrator remembers the date as February 23, 1973

when "Coal-mines and the wheat market were being nationaliz ed... and in the

Communist Party of India, the split between Dange's Moscow faction and

Namboodiripad's C.P.1 (M) had become unbridgeable" (MC; p.554).

The fusion of the national history and the individual history is underscored

repeatedly in the course of the novel. Parvati meets Major Shiva on May 18, 1974, at

the very moment of India's first nuclear explosion at the deserts of Rajasthan. The

narrator asks, "Was Shiva's explosion into my life truly synchronous with India's

arrival without prior warning at the nuclear age?" (MC; p.568) Shiva has a liaison

with Parvati and abandons her once she gets pregnant. Shiva's increasing corruption

is parallel to the deterioration of the country's economy and the corruption of its

politicians under Indira Gandhi's government. The progress of Parvati's pregnancy is

parallel to the growing strength of the Janata Party under the leadership of Jaya

Prakash Narayan and Moraji Desai.

Rushdie maintains an effort at synchronizing Parvati's thirteen-day labour and

the thirteen days of political tumult in India. Parvati's labour pains start on June 12,

1975, the day Prime Minister lndira Gandhi was found guilty of campaign

malpractice during the election campaign of 1971 by Judge Jag Mohan La1 Sinha of

the Allahabad High Court. The narrator relates,". . .and in the evening of the thirteenth

day ... while Parvati pushed in the ghetto, J.P. Narayan and Morarji Desai were also

goading Indira Gandhi ... so in a sense they were forcing Mrs. Gandhi to push.,.and

elsewhere the Prime Minister was giving birth to a child of her own ... the word

Emergency was being heard for the first time.. .and at the precise instant of the birth

of the new India ... my son, the child of the renewed tick tock, came out into the

world" (MC; pp.584-585). Just as Parvati gives birth to her child Aadam Sinai, Indira

Gandhi brings forth hers- the Emergency, the new dictatorship. Aadam Sinai is silent

and thoughthl and does not cry at all for the first year of his life. It is parallel to the

nation's silent acceptance of the Emergency. All the time that India is under the

Emergency, Aadam Sinai suffers from a kind of tuberculosis and it is cured when the

Emergency is lifted.

Rushdie presents a powerful picture of Emergency, when the constitution was

altered to give the Prime Minister absolute powers. He presents a distorted picture of

life under the Emergency - the censorship of press, forced sterilizations, demolition of

Delhi slums and the sufferings of the ordinary people. Rushdie is so critical of the

Emergency because it "drastically curtailed individual liberty7'?' It damaged reality so

badly that nobody ever managed to put it together again. Saleem Sinai, in the novel,

admits; "...my presentation of the Emergency in the guise of a six-hundred-and-

thirty-five-day-long midnight was perhaps excessively romantic, and certainly

contradicted by the available meteorological data" (MC; p.619).

Sanjay Gandhi was the government official primarily responsible for two

central programs - beautification of the city, Delhi and the sterilization campaign - enacted during the State of Emergency between 1975 and 1977. Rushdie describes

how vans and bulldozers breakdown the slum tenements and how quickly the slums

transplanted themselves elsewhere. ". . .now the machines of destruction were in their

element, and the little hovels of the shanty-town were slipping sliding crazily beneath

the force of the irresistible creatures, huts snapping like twigs, the little paper parcels

of the puppeteers and the magic baskets of the illusionists were being crushed into a

pulp; the city was being beautified ..."( M C p.602). Sanjay Gandhi's civic

beautification programme completely demolished Salem's colony from the face of

the earth.

Sanjay Gandhi's second nationwide project was sterilization movement, which

Rushdie calls 'Sperectomy: the draining-out of hope' (MC; p.611). Rushdie describes

how camps were set up everywhere and how men were vasectomized under force-

bribed with radios or money, or physically forced into it. Saleem describes the horrors

and also his own ectomization.

Saleem believes that the State of Emergency was declared not only to crush

Janata Morcha, but also to destroy the children of midnight. Mrs. Gandhi had learnt

about the children with miraculous gifts. As she was jealous of their powers, she

ordered their arrest. Saleem, living in the colony or ghetto of the magicians, was the

first to be captured by Shiva and handed over to Mrs. Gandhi. Saleem is forced to

supply the names and addresses of the remaining five hundred and eighty'children.

All of them were taken to tubectomy-sections and made impotent. Saleem found

himself released from captivity after the defeat of Mrs. Gandhi in 1977. As Sushila

Singh has rightly interprets, "Drained above and drained below, Saleem felt that an

age, which had begun on that long ago midnight, had come to an end. He had shared

the privilege and the curse of midnight's child re^^, to be both master and victim of his

times,' to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the

rnultit~des".~~

According to Rushdie the depiction of Emergency, which represented the dark

side of Independence, did not mean the end of all hope. "It's the end of a particular

hope, but the book implies that there is another, tougher generation on the way".4S

The book, he says, "was written in the light of a very dark time".46 But he uses history

as a tool to express the 'progression from light to dary4'of India as well as of Saleem.

Just as Saleem's birth corresponded to the birth of a new nation, so too does his son's

birth correspond to the beginning of a new era in Indian history. However, there are

crucial differences between this iteration and the original instance. Whereas Saleem

was born at a moment suffised with optimism, his son Aadam is born during the State

of Emergency, a time of anxiety and discord. C. Kanaganayakam rightly remarks,

"There is the suggestion that good is born out of evil and that the present collapse

might lead to a future unity".48

With the birth of Aadam sinai, the story of the original band of midnight's

children draws to a close, only to begin a new story. Instead of Shiva's knees (the

power of war) and Saleem's nose (the ability to smell), Parvati gives birth to a baby

with a pair of enormous ears (the power to listen to his father's story). Saleem's

success in writing down his story may or may not ensure that it was passed on and

remembered. As Josna E. Rege suggests, "Against the evidence even of the narrative

itself, the powers of Saleem's son and by extension, of the new generation, project the

hope that the times have bestowed upon them what it takes to survive and move

forward collectively - even to create new myths*'.49

By the end of the novel, the reversed fortunes of the two have righted

themselves. Shiva, the poor child who should have been rich, becomes wealthy and

respected, and Saleem, the rich child who should have been poor, loses his inheritance

and dwells in a slum. However, Shiva remains unable to shake the legacy of poverty

that shaped him, emphasizing once again the fact that personal histories mold in

inexorable ways.

Midnight's Children is almost an epic of the children of darkness, the new

born India. It represents an attempt by Rushdie to write a new history of India, one

that takes all facets of the great nation into account. "A thousand and one children

were born; there were a thousand and one possibilities which had never been present

in one place at one time before; and there were a thousand and one dead ends"

(MC; p.278). The hyphenated terms Saleem generates to describe his relationship

with India suggest that there are multiple, varied, and equally legitimate ways in

which to experience- and, therefore, write- history. These new, hyphenated definitions

reflect Saleem's intention to redefine national history according to his own personal

narrative. In order to succeed, Saleern must bend and reshape language. Words get

jammed together, just as the details of Saleem's life are jammed into the political

history of India. By redefining language, Saleem redefines reality. The old, formal

conventions of narrative can not sufficiently convey this new story, so Saleem breaks

those conventions, playfully violating the rules of time, space, and language.

There are some historical inaccuracies in the novel which are recognized by

the narrator himself. Saleem violates the chronology in his writing regarding the

assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and 1957 general elections. He defends the former

by saying, "...in my India, Gandhi will continue to die at the wrong time" (MC;

p.230). Similarly, regarding 1957 general elections he says, "...then it occurs to me

that 1 have made another error- that the election of 1957 took place before, and not

after, my tenth birthday; but although I have racked my brains, my memory refuses,

stubbornly, to alter the sequence of events" (MC; p.308). Saleem believes that as the

narrator he does have power to alter history, to distort everything and to rewrite the

whole history of his times. He says that he had entered into the illusion of the artist.

So he cuts up history to suit him~elf and is capable of distortions.

Rushdie mentions these mistakes in his Imaginary Homelands: Essays and

Criticism and confesses, "The novel does contain a few mistakes that are mine as

well as alee em's".^^ These mistakes are said to be the outcome of his 'sloppy

research'." He attributes some of these to 'the ambiguity of history' or to 'a falliable

memory of the protagonist'.S2~ushdie has said that when he remembered his own

reaction, he realized the deceptiveness of memory. "That showed me that memory

does play very extraordinary tricks on you. So that is why 1 made Saleem make that

kind of mistakes ... I found that I did not have total recall of the past, that I was

remembering certain things very vividly, sometimes accurately and sometimes not".53

Contradicting his reasons for breaking the conventions, Saleem insists that he

is speaking the truth while reciting his memories. "1 told you the tru th... Memory's

truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, 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" (MC; p.292). He calls

the process of preserving the past through memory as 'the chutnification of history'

(MC; p. 642). Taking cue fiom the Braganza's pickles, Saleem recalls that making a

pickle involves an intricate process of selecting, slicing, synthesizing and stocking. He

draws a parallel to his historical recitation wherein he chutnifies his oration to

picking, paring, proportioning and pickling. Similar to the chutnification process,

Saleern embarks upon justifying his imaginary inclusions to be part and parcel of his

attempt at chutnification of history.

The historical facts that Rushdie mentions and the numerous flavours he adds

finally blend to form a historical novel on par with the pickles that are farmented to

acquire the relish of satisfying the itching taste buds. "One day, perhaps, the world

may taste the pickles of history. They may be too,strong for some palates, their smell

may be overpowering, tears may rise to eyes; I hope nevertheless that it will be

possible to say of them that they possess the authentic taste of truth.. .that they are,

despite everything, acts of love" (MC; p. 644). Judith Plotz calls the novel

"extravagant metafictional metaphor: narrative as chutney"." She cites Shashi

Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel as one of the recent historical novels which

continue 'Rushdie's task of chutnifying history, of representing post-colonial

Indianness in self-reflective post-modern texts'."

,Allegorical, metaphorical or circumstantial - whatever might be the

interpretation adopted, Midnight's children is a novel that takes the reader beyond

his ordinary imagination. A person shown to be crumbling towards the end of the

novel is taken as a representation of disintegrating India. Though many critics criticise

the pessimism shown by the author, Salman Rushdie strongly denies any such

negative outlook. Disintegration or destruction is the beginning of construction, he

argues. So Salman Rushdie strongly defends the ending of his novel by saying that "I

am often accused of pessimism, but I don't think the end of the book suggests a

negative view. 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 alee em".^^

In Midnight's Children, Rushdie successfilly dovetails the story of an

individual with the story of a nation in an ingenious way. With the intensity of his

creative power, Rushdie blends the historical elements with fictional elements. He has

combined the heterogeneous and diverse elements like history, fact, fantasy, myth and

metaphor and transformed them into a new creative whole, which acts as a work of

fiction. In the novel Rushdie does not redeem or annihilate historical past. He goes

beyond history, 're-interpreting, revising and appropriating it as a concept for

articulating' his colbnial consciousness. By using the "binocular lens of allegory,

Rushdie refocuses our concept of history as post-colonial and post-modernist

discour~e".~' Thus, history acquires the central stage in Midnight's Children. The

novel dismantles history with the help of post-modern narrative techniques of magic

realism, parody and allegory.

Rushdie, while rendering the action of Midnight's Children through the

narrator's view point and opinion, structures his motives, images and symbols in such

a way that he shows how close he is to the Indian philosophical tradition. He fuses

moral and philosophical issues as well as different modes of perception of the world.

He rejects the belief in man's ability to write and think objectively about history and

further demonstrates that reality can only be gasped through myth or literature.

REFERENCES

Bankim C%andra ChatterJee, Introduction, Rajsimha, (Bengal: Bangiya Sahitya

Parishad, 1893) pp. 26-27.

2. R.S. Pathak, "History and the Individual in the Novels of Rushdie", The Novels

of Salman Rushdie (Ed.) G.R.Taneja & R.K. Dhawan, (New Delhi: Indian

Society for Commonwealth Studies, 1 992) p. 123

3. Keith Wilson, "Midnight's Children and Reader Responsibility", Critical

Quarterly, (26) 3, Autumn 1984, p.23.

4. D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke, Salrnan Rushdie, Modem Novelists Series, (UK:

Mamillan, 2009) p.65.

5. Uma Parameswaran, The Perforated Sheet: Essays on Salman Rushdie's Art,

(New Delhi: East-West Press, 1988) p.21.

6. Ibid., p.21.

7. Maria Couto, "Midnight's Children and Parents: The Search for Indo-British

Identity", Encounter, Vol. 58 (2), February 1982, p.63.

8. I ~ i n g H. Buchen, "The Aesthetics of the Supra Novel" (Ed.) John Halperin, The

Theory of the Novel: New Essays, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974)

p. 120.

9. T.N. Dhar, "Micro- Macro Symbiosis: The Form of Salman Rushdie's

Midnight's Children ", JIWE, Vol. 13 (I), January 1985, p. 16.

10. Ibid., p.16.

11. Salman Rushdie, The Times of India, 1 November 1981, p.8.

12. Shyam M. Asnani, "The Socio-political Scene of the 1930s: Its Impact on the

Indo-English Novel", Commonwealth Quarterly, Vol. 6 (21), December 1981,

p.15.

13. John Haffenden, Novelists in Interview, (London: Methuen, 1985) p.243.

14. ~ 4 t h Wilson, "Midnight's Children and Reader Responsibility", p.24.

15. fjalman Rushdie, The Sundry Standard, 14 June 1981, p.6.

16. R.S. Path&, "History and the Individual in the Novels of Rushdie", The Novels

of S h r n Rushdie (Ed.) G.R. Taneja & R.K. Dhawan, ('New Delhi: Indian

society for Commonwealth Studies, 1992) p. 120.

17. Uma Pmmeswmaq The Perforated Sheet: Essays an Salman Rushdie's Art,

p.22.

18. Ibid., p.23.

19- M.Madhusudhana Rao, Salman Rushdie's Fiction: A Study (New Delhi:

Sterling, 1992) p.61.

20. Uma Pmmeswaran, The Perforated Sheet: Essays on Salman Rushdie's Art,

pp.23-24.

21. Salman Rushdie, "In Good Faith", Sunday, 25 February - 3 March 1990, p.91.

22. Salman Rushdie, Shame, (London: Vintage Books, 1995) p.87.

23. R.S. Pathak, "History and the Individual in the Novels of Rushdie", The Novels

of Salman Rushdie, p. 128.

24. Tariq Ali, Introduction, An Indian Dynasty: The Story of the Nehru- Gandhi

Family, (New York: Picador, 1985) p.78.

25. Chandrabhanu Pattanayak, "Interview with Salman Rushdie", The Literary

Criterion, Vol. xviii (3), 1983, p.21.

26. Una Chaudhuri, "Imaginative Maps: Excerpts from a conversation with Salman

Rushdie", Turnstile, Vol. 21 (I), 1990, pp. 39-40.

27. Tapan K. Ghosh, Introduction, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's ChUdren:

Textual Analysis and Evaluation, (New Delhi: Asia Book Club, 2004) p.23.

28. T.S. Eliot, Selected Prose, (Ed.) John Hayward, (London: Penguin, 1963) pp.22-

23.

29. Ibid., pp.22-23.

30. Salman Rushdie, 'The Legacy of Indira Gandhi", The Illustrated Weekly of

India, 30 December 1984, p.51.

3 1. Salman Rushdie, Shame, (London: Vintage Books, 1995) p.144.

32. Chandrabhanu Pattanayak, "Interview with Salman Rushdie", p.21.

33. John Haffenden, Novelists in Interview, pp.243-244.

34, Betel Riemenschneider, "History and the Individual in Anita Desai's Clear

Light ~~y and Satman Rushdie's Midnight's Children ", World Literature

Written in English, VO~. 23 (I), 1984, p.204.

35. ~ a l p h J.Crme, "The Chutnification of History", Inventing India: A History of

h d l a in Engush Language Fiction, (London: Maemillan, 1992) p.176.

36. Neeraja Mattoo, "Indianness in Midnight's Children: Rushdie's view of an

hnnesiac Nation", The Indian Novel in English: Essays in Criticism, (Ed.)

Ravi h ~ d a n Sinha & R. K.Sinha, (Ranchi: Ankit, 1987) p.66.

37. M. Madhusudhana Rao, Salman Rushdie's Fiction: A Study (New Dclhi:

Sterling, 1992) p.64.

38. Sushila Singh, "Salman Rushdie's Novels: From Fantasy to Reality",

Tlie Commonwealth Review, Vol. 1 (I), 1989, p.118.

39. M. Madhusudhana Rao, "Quest for Identity", The Literary Criterion, Vol. 25

(4), 1990, p.40.

40. M. Madhusudhana Rao, Salman Rushdie's Fiction: A Study, p.64.

41. Rani Dharker, "An Inteniew with Salman Rushdie", New Quest, Vol. 42,

November-December 1983, p.355.

42. Abdul Razak Gurnah, "Themes and Structures in Midnight's Children", The

Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie, (Ed.) Abdul Razak Gurnah, (New

York: Cambridge University Press, 2007) p.106.

43. R. S. Pathak, "History and the Individual in the Novels of Rushdie", p.132.

44. Sushila Singh, "Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children- Rethinking the Life and

Times in Modem India", Panjab University Research Bulletin, Vol. 16 (I),

1985, p.65.

45. John Haffenden, "A Quiet Anger- An Interview with Salman Rushdie", The

Literary Review, September 1983, p. 244.

46. Ibid., p.244.

47. Ibid., p.244.

48. C. Kanaganayakam, "Myth and Fabulosity in Midnight's Children ", Dalhousie

Review, Vol. 67 (I), 1987, p.92.

49. Josna E. Rege, "Victim into Protagonist? Midnight's Children and the Post-

Rushdie National Narratives of the Eighties", Studies in the Novel, Val. 29 (3),

1997, p.355.

50. Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991,

(London: Granata, 1991) p.23

51. Ibid., p.23.

52. Ibid., p.23.

53. Salman Rushdie, Interview, Kunapipi, Vol. IV (2), 1982, p.19.

54. Judith Plotz, "Rushdie's Pickle and the New Indian Historical Novel: Sealy,

Singh, Tharoor and National Metaphor", World Literature Written in English,

Vol. 35 (2), 1996, p.28.

55. Ibid., p.29.

56. Chandrabhanu Pattanayak, "Interview with Salman Rushdie", p.21.

57. 0:M.P. Juneja, Post-Colonial Novel: Narratives of Colonial Consciousness,

(New Delhi: Creative Books, 1995) p.106.