“Political Issue Discussed in the Fiction of Salman Rushdie”
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REVIEW ARTICLE
AN “POLITICAL ISSUE DISCUSSED IN THE FICTION OF INTERNATIONALLY SALMAN RUSHDIE” INDEXED PEER Study of Political Representations: REVIEWED & REFEREED JOURNAL Diplomatic Missions of Early Indian to Britain
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Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education Vol. VI, Issue No. XII, October-2013, ISSN 2230-7540
“Political Issue discussed In the Fiction of Salman Rushdie”
Preeti Sharma1 Dr. Sandhya Saxena2
1Research Scholar, Shri Venkateshwara University, Gajraula
2Research Guide
Abstract – Rushdie in his essay ‘In God We Trust’ has humbly claimed: However, I have found myself, in my fiction, unable to avoid political issues; the distance between individuals and affairs of State is now so small that it no longer seems possible to write novels that ignore the public sphere (Imaginary Homelands 376)
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INTRODUCTION minor and are only enabling devices to talk about the actuality. Magic realism has its own wonders. With the If his narrator's ancestral history exhibits his magic realism in the novels, they can be realistic in Autobiographical details, his concern displays the one way, magical in another, that is they can be interests of the masses also. His novels contain treated realistically in one society and as works of perhaps an exceptionally high proportion of real fantasy in the other. We have examples of the novels historical events, directly represented or readily by these two novelists i.e. Marquez's One Hundred recognizable public figures, and constant Years of Solitude and Rushdie's Midnight's Children resemblances to the known facts of his own life. The which are treated as fantasies in the West. histories are contemporaries with author's incorporation of contemporary literary theories. The defamation and bans that encountered Rushdie Rushdie preserves Indian history in the form of a so often are a strong evidence of the reality presented pickle with the ingredients of politics, geography, and in his fictive world. His 'inclusive' mode of writing literature and so on, hoping that 'One day the world defies precisely the arbitrary distinction between the may taste the pickles of history. fictional world of the book and the real world outside it, thus inviting political controversies. Rushdie, even The novelist, the essayist, the travel writer and the when he does, uses fantasy not out of whim but as 'a screenwriter, the martyr for free speech and purveyor method of producing intensified images of reality' - of story as the political statement, Rushdie has not images which have their roots in observable, verifiable only achieved the singular distinction of being fact. (Reder 43) recognized as an artist in his own lifetime but he is also arguably the most prominent novelist of the late Rushdie was well aware of the realistic presentation of 20th century, both for his literary achievements and for the grim situation in Pakistan, that it could lead to the controversies surrounding them. Like Marquez in official wrath and the dumping or banning of the book Spanish, Rushdie has taken history as his subject and which would break the 'writer's heart.' His comment fictionalized it, thus instituting a new genre. He has about the inappropriateness of the realistic mode is received almost every award in the course of a near similar in spirit to the rejection of this mode by the 3D-year career and has become the living image of satirists, who cover up their objects of derision in a the romantic writer; worldly, erudite and knowing, cloak of fantasy to save themselves from libel suits. equally at ease with the purveyors of pop culture and MD Fletcher in this context states that in Shame satire the intellectual arbiters of the literary taste, and a is complemented by fantasy. If we look at the whole scabrous critic of colonialism, be it political, social or range of satiric tradition, from the Greeks to the cultural. Despite his deep connection to the events of present, fantasy has invariably been a part of satire. his time he remains somehow removed from the ordinary sphere of existence; abstract, aloof, distant. Rushdie is explicit about his magic realism when he says that there is some magic of real in his whimsical When we compare Marquez with Rushdie we see that elements also. And the surreal techniques are the in India both the novelists are not taken to be means for attaining that and they are not end in fantasists. The fantasy elements in them are relatively themselves. To exemplify, Saleem in Midnight's
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“Political Issue discussed In the Fiction of Salman Rushdie”
Children has a distorted nose and this distortion And after magic realism, if we talk of narrativisation presents a certain view of the world. The magic that Rushdie employs in his novels, the unique style realism gives an edge to Rushdie's representation of he displays in it has amazed us. At the very onset of India, the clinch here is the subjectivity i.e. his India is his novels the beans are spilled to foreshadow the what his India is like rather than what India is like - not form, theme, and structure of the novel. The title an oracle of truth or objective representation. 'perforated sheet' in his novel Midnight's Children indicates the fragmented style that follows in the Once when Martin Amis, British novelist and a novel, and 'once upon a time' are the magical word- contemporary of Rushdie asked what he had and he stars that sparkles in the factual (real) history. And this had not, Rushdie succinctly answered: 'India.' And style is not only followed in this very novel but it very true to his words India has been not only the explains the narrative technique used in his other setting but also the grand theme of Rushdie's fiction, works also. The narrative in Midnight's Children holds and India's space in the Western literary world has uniformity in Saleem's search for his identity, meaning been greatly enhanced through his representations of and form both. This is the unity that binds the it. His novels present India as 'a continent finding its fragments in Shame and The Moor's Last Sigh also. voice' (New York Times) as if before him no literary His use 'of 'once upon a time' also shows his use of tradition existed to voice India! To explain this void an the familiar overture of the fairytales. academician, Robin J.Lewis has stated that Rushdie has 'altered our vision of the Indian sub-continent,' to Another organizing principle of his narrative is his the extent that all previous literary representations explicit reference to Scheherazade's tales. Like these, both by British writers such as Kipling and Forster and even his narrative is a blend of various stories told in by Indians such as Raja Rao and R.K. Narayan have various narrative modes spiced up with myths, been simultaneously proved lacking. legends, gossips, rumours and factual incidents. Rushdie through his narrator throws light on what is to R.S. Pathak rightly puts that Midnight's Children come in the following chapters - he admits number of 'incorporates the stupendous Indian past with its stories following up the commingling of improbable pantheon, its epics, and' its wealth of folklore and fairy and mundane. tales which at the same time playing a role in the tumultuous Indian present' (118). Rushdie through his Rushdie transforms in his protagonists also. After combination of semi-humorous and semi-serious tone, making Saleem, the hero, he in Shame dwelled on the reflects more profoundly on the ethos of the sub- peripheral hero who supported the main plot, was continent. He becomes successful in giving centre of the plot sometimes and remained on the expression to certain compelling realities. In Midnight's edges other time. The female characters of the novel Children, these are concerned with the contemporary also have their dominance. The peripheral nature of history of India, a long series of insensitive acts and Omar and centrality of Sameer give us a vision of self-centred people exploiting sectarian rivalry. In totality. Some people are the centre to the world and Shame too, fantasy evokes the tragic history of others are peripheral entities who are either Pakistan through its bizarre social customs and spectators or passive heroes throughout their lives. repressive political realities. We are reminded her of Ogden Nash's poem Confessions of a Born Spectator where we get to The plots of all his works are colorfully drawn by learn that all of us cannot actively participate but some employing the technique of parallels and contrasts. of us have to satisfy ourselves to remain as mere For example in the novel Shame, the confrontation is spectators throughout our lives. between two families (Hyder and Harappa), two forces (shame and shamelessness), two temperaments We see that Rushdie's characters are stolen pieces (Omar Khayyam and Babar) and two virtues out of people - somebody's one trait, other's all. As he (deformed and Good News). By the fusion of facts and has claimed himself in one of his interviews in fiction the novelist is able to mesmerize the reader. Midnight's Children except Indira Gandhi there are no Rushdie's style in Shame helps to create an unreal direct portraits. atmosphere in the novel. By giving his personal opinions he never makes readers realize that he is While dealing with the question of historical fabricating an illusion. representation, we can conclude from the study that Rushdie by interrogating the transparency of fact, There are moments when Rushdie looks 'history in the concept of homogeneity, fixity and continuity of history eye' the lingered moments that remain vibrant, the gives us the conclusion that reality is irretrievable and scenes that are firmly grounded and the places where representation is nothing but a series of magic does not overwhelm realism. This kind of interpretations. These interrogations are re-enforced sweeping style has a panoramic power to blend by Moraes' Scheherazade an narration in The Moor's inextricably disparate themes as social mores, political Last Sigh which mimics Aurora's palimpsest art, fusing history of a subcontinent, personal agony and his digressions, fabrications, distortions, re- haunting literary echoes from all ages and many imaginations, and conjectures into the 'monumental countries. Rushdie has aptly remarked that his work is histories' of contemporary India. read as 'fantasy' in the West and as 'history' in the
East. Rushdie is a self-conscious theoretical novelist who www.ignited.in 2 Preeti Sharma1 Dr. Sandhya Saxena2 Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education Vol. VI, Issue No. XII, October-2013, ISSN 2230-7540 has propounded his own theory of history. He regards very well interwoven into the tyrant/democrat, individuals to be linked to history in several ways as innocence/beastliness, male/ female, spiritual/atheistic he explains in Midnight's Children: oppositions. Rushdie's novels are deep penetrated with structural dichotomies that operate on two levels; ...I was inextricably entwined with my world ... all the plot and the underlying commentary. The tyrant actions of mine which directly — literally-affected, or executing the democrat is based on the altered the course of, seminal historical events... The Robespierre/Danton paradigm. Omar is the devilish union of "passive" and "metaphorical" encompasses reversal of name of the renowned poet as he himself all socio-political trends and vents which, by existing, not only uses his prodigious mind for ends more dire affected me metaphorically- .... (Midnight's Children than creation of verses, but also turns out on the 286) otherworldly plane to be the chief agent of the evil, the Beast's prey. Thus, not only there is abundance of The novels of Rushdie being products of the eighties strands of complexity of met fictional and intersexual project the history creating individual while the earlier undulations, but there is also a powerful current novels focused on individuals as history bearing and diffusing vision of the other world that grants the history suffering. The new techniques in these novels Rushdean ocean an ingenious exceptionality. do not present incidents and vents of history in chronological order. Current events bring to focus Reading out the otherworldly motives from Rushdie's events of the past. So artistically is the new and old novels needs to be framed in a distinct interpretive synthesized that events of the past come alive, horizon; otherwise it will be no more than a tedious making it a living experience. Rushdie is deeply exegesis, which is why there is a singular interpretive concerned with the politics of the sub-continent in line for each of the novels, signaled by chapter titles: which the common man is an active participant in the e.g. 'Grimus: World upon Worlds,' Midnight's Children: making of history. Road from Kashmir,' Shame: An Other World Strikes Back,' or 'The Satanic Verses: Dreamscapes of a Postmodernism has opened the doors to a host of Green-Eyed Monster.' new techniques through which the contemporary consciousness can be explored. Literary technique Rushdie while framing his novels has kept in mind use has moved away from the conventional, and freely of the postmodern narratives, as his novels resist makes use of unconventional methods. Postmodernist closure, which is impossible for the textual and the writers like Rushdie himself experiment with non- ideological reasons. The arrival of the meaning, which literary techniques like the cinema. The impact of the is concomitant with the closure, is repeatedly Bombay Talkie is seen in both situations and deferred. Marshal in this context says. techniques in the novels of Rushdie. The switching of babies, the intervention of different religions in The End is the insight that there can be no ending, no bringing up kids, many Bombay films dwell on this beginning, no ground because everything is being syncretic mixture of religions of their family and social endlessly rewritten. No way out of text. (Waugh 90) dramas. Other features are, leaving ransom money in an old fort, the hero losing his memory at a crucial The post-modern strategy that exemplifies this is the stage due to an accident, miraculous recovery again mise-en-abyme which repeats the same structure by some accident as in Saleem Sinai's case he loses endlessly; it has multiple endings, the text is open his memory by being hit by the silver spittoon and gets ended and it involves the readers in the production of recovered when a snake in Sunder bans bites him. meaning. The mystery goes along the text' it is there even after the reader has come to the last page. The In Ground Beneath Her Feet Rai and Ormus both are novel begins before the beginning and continues after artists with one being more of a voyeur and another the ending, as a specific end would 'kill' the text. An more of a god. Similarly, Aurora paints a picture of the aura of mystery sustains every work. deceased mother which grows into the image of Mother India, the powerful mother goddess both Salman Rushdie uses food as a recurring motif and nurturing and devouring her children. But for the his texts can be approached as a feast, with his readers the pathos in all these novels (kitsch) moves narrators as the cooks, setting different dishes of on aesthetic grounds. It is not only the political, memory and experience before the reader. Rushdie geographical or social aspects of the nation that himself forthrightly acknowledges the link between the Rushdie represents in his novels but he also, takes up preservation of memory and the preservation of food: the traditional image of Mother India; giving it a post- Saleem, of course, is a cook. But not so an average modernist lucidity and paint it with the brilliant cook: 'chutnificatioli' of contemporary history. You are amazed; but then I am not, you see, one of
The modem novels like the modem man search for your 200-rupees-amonth cookery johnnies, but my mystic experience in his effort to be more secular. The own master, working beneath the saffron and green worldly-versus-otherworldly structure of the novels is winking of my personal neon goddess. And my chutneys and kasaundies are, after all, connected to
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“Political Issue discussed In the Fiction of Salman Rushdie”
my nocturnal scribblings -- by day amongst the pickle- This mingling of reality and fantasy is the most vats, by night within these sheets, I spend my time at significant aspect of Rushdie's theory and practice of the great work of preserving. Memory, as well as fruit, fiction. Like Keats, Rushdie too feels that occasional is being saved from the corruption of the clocks. trips to the dream world are an essential part of our (Midnight's Children 38) essence:
The pickles Saleem refers to are not cucumber Given the gift of self-consciousness, we can dream pickles, but mixtures of different ingredients that mix versions of ourselves, new selves for old. Waking as together, exchanging flavors, and then preserved. well as sleeping, our response to the world is Saleem refers to each chapter as a 'pickle': essentially imaginative. (Imaginary Homelands 377)
One empty jar ... how to end? Happily, with Mary in When Rushdie tries to recall memories he is genuinely her teak rocking-chair and a son who has begun to amazed by the fact that he could recollect a great deal speak? Amid recipes, and thirty jars with chapter- of the past. He remembers himself what clothes headings for names? (Midnight's Children 550) people had worn on certain days, and school scenes and whole passages of school dialogue ad verbatim. And this can be applied to his other novels also. Though Rushdie has tapped a rich seam, he makes it Rushdie, like other Indian diaspora writers, in his clear that he is not gifted with total recall and it was border crossing transfigures cultural boundaries and precisely the partial nature of these memories, their recreates new representations of his part, his self, and fragmentation that made them so evocative for him. his new milieus. Consequently, identities and cultures get delocalized-but seldom detached from memories In this regard the great Bengali novelist of the past. (A. L. Macloed 226) Bankimchandra Chatterjee has aptly written:
In Cyril Dabydeen's memorable phrase 'mudbound in ... the purpose of history can be accomplished in a memory,' (64) these diasporic people evoke the past novel. The novelist is not always bound by the chains in highly selective modes and build a present that is a of truth. He can when he wants to resort to the use of hybrid of multiple cultures and experiences. This leads his imagination to achieve the effects he desires; for to the compulsion of examining the value of 'root' and this reason the novel cannot always take the place of 'home' in diaspora. Rushdie in Imaginary Homelands history... To ensure that my novel is a novel I have articulates this predicament when he talks of the had to introduce many matters which are imaginary.... sense of loss experienced by exiles and immigrants There is no need for everything in novel to be and their urge to reclaim what was lost. He argues historical. (26-28) that 'reality is an artifact' and the expatriate is in a better position than others to verbalise the pluralistic, But then Rushdie keeps space for inaccuracies as he contradictory nature of contemporary experiences. is not any dispassionate, disinterested chronicler and is not writing any factual history but is drawing upon Timothy Brennan points out the distinction between history through the process of filtration. There are a Saleem's 'wild god of memory' and Padma's 'lotus number of references which are erroneous e.g. Lata goddess of the present' (Midnight's Children 177) Mangeshkar is heard singing on All India Radio as early as 1946. Again the elections of 1957 took place Keeper of the casaundy jars above Saleem's writing in the spring of the year but Saleem has his mother table, Padma is naturally a preserver of traditions. But campaigning in the summer of 1957. This discrepancy she is not, surprisingly, a symbol of memory, which is is no oversight or misrepresentation because Saleem a historical quality directly at odds with the repetitive himself realizes the mistake and also the author has logic of folklore. (106) no reluctance in confessing that 'the novel does contain a few mistakes that are mine as well as His novels are littered with mistakes in presenting Saleem's' (Imaginary Homelands 23). In many of his history but they too are not without purpose as he recollections he is at variance with the literal facts and himself gives their purpose which is born of the that his memory is playing tricks with his brains but in novelist's eagerness to capitalize '...the most exalted such a situation, he clings to the false memory, of possibilities: the feasibility of the chutnification of preferring it to mere literal happenstance. history, the grand hope of the pickling of time!' (Midnight's Children 548) The novel too is spread with The novels of Rushdie are strewn here and there with remarks about the mysterious relationship between the philosophy and technique that Rushdie has reality and truth. And these give the readers Rushdie's applied to his works and his metafictional works also philosophy of writing using 'memory's truth.' Rushdie's give understanding of the general theory the novelists novels thus present 'imaginary truth' (The Hindustan put into practice. The narrator Shakil visualizes
Times 24 March 1983) which relates not to a particular history: country: History is a natural selection. Mutant versions of the It relates to India, it relates to Asia. It relates to most of past struggle for dominance; new species of fact arise, the Third World as an idea. (Gentleman April 1984, and old, saurian truths go to the wall, bindfolded and 66) smoking last cigarettes. Only the mutations of the
strong survive. ...History loves only those who www.ignited.in 4 Preeti Sharma1 Dr. Sandhya Saxena2 Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education Vol. VI, Issue No. XII, October-2013, ISSN 2230-7540 dominate her: ... (Shame 124) nation's history. The grandiloquent claim is a comic inversion where an individual's destiny is inextricably If Midnight's Children deals with the politics of the chained to the history of the country. This interlocking eastern Hindu India and Shame dramatizes military initiate the interlacing of fantasy in factual history and politics of the divided Muslim India, The Moor's Last this aspect of historical representation has been taken Sigh re-affirms Nehruvian idea of India, Christian up in chapter three. intolerance in Spain, Spanish expulsion, Portuguese colonial history, Jewish Diaspora etc. Rushdie laughs Very many times Rushdie intrudes in his novels and at the secular obsessions and the failure of modem gives his personal opinions and the readers who are politics and make the readers aware of their own fully engrossed in the illusive world fail to notice this follies. The novels have narrators that are alter ego of fabrication. This is very near to the theatrical the author and represent his satirical venom applied technique used by Bertoh Brecht in his 'theory of with merciless comic vituperation to the political alienation' which is One of attack, more than winning reportage of scenario in the two countries. And both his audiences to his side, and while doing so he made are supremely grotesque vehicles for linking fanciful it clear that he was using every effort to remind the family-tale and murky political history. audience that it is in the theatre, witnessing a show. (Miller 671) Despite Rushdie's chosen irreverence for national leaders he does not woefully lack in the codes of And Rushdie takes the double benefit of intrusion. He decency. He targets these leaders with the same old does not do it himself actively but he makes his literary devices of irony, satire, parody and fantasy. narrator destroy the illusion of reality in the narrative.
Rushdie has conjured up a striking new genre by The inter-linking of the family-tale of the Sinais with mixing free-flight fairy-tale with savage political the history of India and Pakistan is jettisoned with indictment. Emulating the ancient masters of the art of grotesque characters and episodes. Matching the personal vengeance, Dryden, Pope and Swift of Indian scene, one can mention some instances of bygone ages, he excels at creating the grotesque on Rushdie's grotesquery in people and episodes in his such overwhelming scale as to rescue the object of treatment of the history of Pakistan, which he cynically his dislike to the ridiculous. describes as the Land of the Pure - nonchalantly translating the Urdu phrase into English, and Rushdie has used history of nation over various exploiting all its irony in the hindsight of history. lengths of time and he shows a certain kind of integrity by means of special devices as chronological Rushdie has made Pakistani General Zulfikar, uncle progression, repetitive imagery and fortuitous of Saleem to link the family-tale with the history of parallelism. There are also frequent references to Pakistan. He has also reduced the 1958 coup which previous events to refresh reader's memories. The made General Ayub the first dictator of Pakistan into a symbols as 'perforated sheet,' saffron and green,' the travesty of military campaign by grotesquely spittoon,' washing chest,' are repeatedly and describing its inner fictional story' into an after-dinner obsessively used sometimes literally as objects and at exercise made out of movements performed by other times metaphorically as symbols that bind pepperpots. Further the immortalization of the General together people and situations which are otherwise as the progenitor of the infamous Cutia unit-22 of the wide apart in time and space. This helps him in 1971 war parodies Heller's Catch-22. So Rushdie sometimes anticipating certain events through a kind parodies the political history making itself a huge of foreshortening achieved by tantalizing bunching of scandal from the chronicles of short-lived prime past, present and future events through riddle-like minister followed by the pepperpots coup of General references - the element in common being just such a Ayub in 1958 and at the other end the exploits of the fortuitous image or object. Cutia unit in Bangla Desh culminating in the loss of East Pakistan told in sweeping picaresque strain in Thus, Rushdie is able to describe the historical- Midnight's Children. political event of Partition, the socio-cultural milieu of the Indian MusHm, and the idiosyncrasies of the Rushdie's novels tend to deal with autobiographical postcolonial. Through this mode not only is the elements and it can be clearly seen when Rushdie political and historical past focused on, but also the says that literature is 'an interim report' from the rich, ethnic, religious, cultural mix that is India. As the artist's conscience, which is 'made at the frontier narrator notes in Midnight's Children, 'If I seem a little between the self and the world' (Imaginary bizarre, remember the wild profusion of my inheritance Homelands 427). Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of ... perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the Stories too like his other novels has direct bearing on midst of teeming multitudes, one must make oneself his own experiences which imparts considerable grotesque' (Midnight's Children 126). poignancy and authenticity to the novel. Rushdie told John Haffenden in an interview: The very opening of the novels seems to weave magic into reality by linking the individual history to entire One of the discoveries of the book was the
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“Political Issue discussed In the Fiction of Salman Rushdie”
importance of escaping from autobiography... It is a trickery. I provided clues.... (Midnight's Children 136) complete fallacy to believe you must always echoes The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (lines experience what you put into a book, what matters is 111115). whether you can imagine it or not: there is no automatic connection between experience and No; I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be Am imaginative writing. (Reder 35-38) an attendant lord ...
History, in particular at scandalous points, has a way In the same way the invocation to Lord Khusro of getting entangled with the personal and family parodies a Hindu prayer. Rushdie has presented cities history of this midnight's child, our narrator-hero: tracing down their complete history with the variety of things like the language riots in Bombay that caused situations and moods observed. the partition of the Bombay State, or the Nanavati case that shook the nation, which Rushdie has Rushdie's remarkable experiments with language parodied in the episode of Commander Sabarmati, make him as much a part of the Indo-English stream where he makes his heroic attempt to re-arrange as of the mainstream of world literature. On one history, or the Turkman Gate Tragedy that brought platter he is compared to Raja Rao and G.V.Desani, about the fall of Indira Gandhi in the general election and on the other he follows the great fantastical, of 1977 stand out in the reader's memory. Sinai's satirical tradition of Sterne, Gunter Grass and Garcia childhood is linked to the language riots in Bombay, Marquez. Rushdie metaphorically compares and when the rioters ran into the eleven- year old Saleem beautifully presents the art of preservation by fusing on his bicycle out of control, pushed hard by Evie language in the fumes of pickle vats. He preserves Bums, and he crashed into history. fruit in the day-time and history at night because both get corrupted with the passage of time. Jean-Pierre Durix's observation on the novels of Marquez that he 'links the social and the political The novels of Rushdie focus on the amalgamation of reality of his homeland with elements more often eastern content and western form to achieve the near found in fairy tales or fantasy' can also be applied to ideal of a 'hybrid post-colonial text.' For mapping the Rushdie. Chapter four takes the historical concept of social formation of the Indian sub-continent in multiple Rushdie to reach masses and classes. Here, the stories, Rushdie takes to a non-mimetic mode of display of facts and fictionalization of the events are storytelling and depends quite heavily on the the ones that effect or get affected by not an individual indigenous, oral narrative styles that his novels have narrator or the reader but every individual and every internalized. Structure is necessarily episodic like reader. great epics Mahabharta, Ramayana and absence of linear plots is supported by digressive lore. Swoops, Rushdie's use of knowledge of history is unbridled and spiral digressions and reiterations which are all there does not stop anywhere. He takes the readers to the in his novels so characteristic of oral narrative exhibit world of cosmology when Saleem watching the the oral tradition of storytelling that his novels have Sputniks cross the sky, Laika the first and the only dog internalized. The richness of technique results in to be shot into space (Midnight's Children 254). We exciting multiple interpretative possibilities. Shame is a get Rushdie's astrological awareness also when he realistic novel and not entirely a roman-a-clef. It is comments on Saleem and Shiva that they were born Rushdie's another post-modernist fiction that under Capricorn constellation rising, the constellation continues the investigation of postcolonial with the power over the knees and had given Shiva its consciousness begun in Midnight's Children. The gift. malleability and unreliability of time, the pliability of the English language is further continued in The Moor's The fact is that Rushdie, with all his facts, statistics, Last Sigh. Rushdie's echoes from earlier classics, his his clever plots and complex allusions, his magnificent puns and anagrams and his exuberant wordplay are imagery, has fashioned an excellent story. But this noteworthy. story-that-has-been-fashioned is left somewhat cold and impersonal. It is something almost too unreal, Rushdie's evocation of the city of Bombay both as something that is too much of a creation to come alive physical reality, and as an organizing metaphor - and actually be touched. 'Bombay is an idea as well as a place'- enabled several later writers like Shashi Tharoor, Shobha De, The novel here reaches at its height of imagination Allan Sealy to engage with this many-faced city as a with all the bizarre powers and it seems to be dream serious fictive space. world of children's literature where national politics, personal biography and social concerns are left far Rushdie consistently held the view that his books are behind. related to the world and indeed argued that it is 'false
to create a politics-free fictional universe' (Outside the Rushdie is well-versed in English literature, and has Whale 137). Rushdie explains his shifting of focus made masterly use of reverberating literary allusions from one place to the whole world in his transient by way of parody in all his novels. Many of Saleem books: Sinai's soliloquies parody lines from Eliot's poetry. For example, No: I'm no monster. Nor I have been guilty of When I wrote Midnight's Children I felt able to focus
my story on one place, the Indian subcontinent, and www.ignited.in 6 Preeti Sharma1 Dr. Sandhya Saxena2 Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education Vol. VI, Issue No. XII, October-2013, ISSN 2230-7540 didn't feel the need to encompass any elsewhere. Rushdie is very fond of using history in his fiction and Since then I have begun to feel more and more that its interrelationship with fantasy and much of his work because of many things - mass migration, hinges on the role of socio-political materials international mayhem, and economic globalization - pertaining to various periods of history. It is worth the world's stories are no longer separate but mentioning here that he has called himself 'a fairly commingled, and have set myself the challenge of political animal' (Gordon Wise 59) and in an interview exploring the literary consequences of taking on this to Gordon Wise he tells that "it seems to me that newly frontier less world. (Interview with S. everything in both books has to do with politics and Prasannarajan 89) with the relationship of the individuals and history." (p.57) He talks about his two novels Midnight's Rushdie in all these works exposes and deconstructs Children and Shame and the comment is well essentialist, modem discourses such as nation, applicable to his other novels like The Moor's Last identity, religion, and other naturalized cultural and Sigh, Haroun and the Sea of Stories and The Satanic historical constructs. He unlike other sub-continental Verses which have political references and persons of post-colonial writers re-tells the history of the sub- prominence. Even Shalimar the Clown is a powerful continent from a post-modem perspective in which love story which is intensely political as well as heterogeneity and difference are foreground where historical. It is a blend of the storytelling traditions of individuals emerge from a hodge-podge of religions, both the east and the west - it is equally steeped in cultures and histories. both the Hindu epic Ramayana and the great European novelists. Every novelist tends to include a period in the book and hence is a historical novelist but in this process of Rushdie is at the same time averse to the idea of the creativity the history is transmuted to become an individuals being handcuffed by their historical integral part of his work of art and achieve universality antecedents as people who forget history are and at times the state of timelessness. For example in condemned to repeat it (The Legacy 51). This reminds Midnight's Children, Midnight is the point of time us of the theory by T.S.Eliot where past and future coalesce in the present and there is liberation from the clock time. Rushdie and The historical sense involves a perception, not only of Tharoor use the language of the centre to describe the the past, but of its presence. This consciousness of moment in history when that centre was forced to history is a sense of the timeless as well as of the relinquish its hold on the empire. However, a great temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal difference between writers like Khushwant Singh in together.... (Selected Prose 22-23) Train to Pakistan (1956), Manohar Malgonkar in A Bend in the Ganges (1962), Cham an Nahal in Azadi Rushdie does not minimize the importance of the past (1975) and Rushdie and Tharoor is the manner in but he wants the balance to be attained. Saleem the which they use this historical fact. Tharoor uses the narrator in Midnight's Children optimally confides: legends of the Mahabharta to describe this historical moment while Rushdie describes this moment, but I am balanced once more - the base of my isosceles through its effect on the life of his narrator Saleem triangk is secure. I hover at the apex, above present Sinai. and past.... (Midnight's Children 232)
In the recent literary scene a great body of historical Therefore we can conclude that it comprehensive fiction has emerged as a result of contemporary concept of history would include a composite time writers' preoccupation with our historic past and the comprising past, present and future. Salman Rushdie reader's interest in such readings. Along with Rushdie is a storyteller of prodigious powers, able to conjure we can rightfully mention the writers like Khushwant up whole geographies, causalities, climates, Singh, Manohar Malgonkar and Shashi Tharoor. And creatures, customs, out of thin air. here it is important to distinguish between the conscious use of history and its sub-conscious use. Rushdie himself considers his novel Midnight's The novels set in the context of some historical Children to be an authority in the genre of history framework represent an unconscious movement writing and he expects the future aspirant historians to toward national homogeneity. It is also observed that it come to this book as guidance and inspiration, 'this is through the historical novel and analyses of the past source-book, this Hadith or Purana or Grundrisse' that the actual day-to-day problems of life can be (Midnight's Children 354). Its comparison to the Hadith encountered, examined, exposed, challenged and or Purana or Grundrisse owes to the juxtaposition of rectified. The factual and imaginative information not materialist and spiritual viewpoints in the narrator's only illuminates the subject but increasingly whets the duality written into the logic of the snakes and ladders reader's curiosity. Hence, here comes the difference game. And there is a hint in this comparison that this that the novelist who makes the use of history by text would gain popularity of the primary-text status. choice is obviously held at a superior level than the William Walsh remarks, one who consciously assimilates it.
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