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Analyzing the Migrant Writer's Perspective of Politics, Religion, and Fanaticism of Post AEGAEUM JOURNAL ISSN NO: 0776-3808 Analyzing the Migrant Writer’s Perspective of Politics, Religion, and Fanaticism of Post- Independence India in Salman Rushdie’s Novel Midnight's Children. Ajesh C Assistant Professor Reva University Bangalore (Karnataka), India. Abstract: Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight's Children showcase the life of a child, Saleem born at the stroke of midnight as India attained her independence. The novel narrates crucial events in the history of India through the story of the protagonist. The novel unveils a tension between a pursuit for heroism, identity and individuality and even the decoy of politics. Rushdie has written this novel from the perspective of a migrant writer and thus the writer has written the novel from a Migrant Writer’s perspective of Politics, religion, and fanaticism of Post-Independence India. This paper has made an attempt to highlight these migrant perspectives in this novel. Instead of realism, fantasy and dream structure take over the novel. In employing the postmodern narrative techniques such as magical realism, self-reflexivity, etc., Salman Rushdie shares many of the stylistic qualities of many postmodern writers. The protagonist Saleem is unreliable when he narrates the historical events, because, he has distorted events for him to remain at the center. Rushdie himself has already admitted the unreliability of his narration. The self-conscious narrator acknowledges the shortcomings of his narration, but he is helpless. However, novel Midnight's Children is a great work of literature and beyond any doubt, the author is a great novelist and he will be remembered for his amazing writing skill. Keywords: Migrant writing, Rushdie, Saleem, Indian Post-Independence Era, Magical Realism, self-reflexion, Post-Modern writing. Volume 8, Issue 4, 2020 http://aegaeum.com/ Page No: 2533 AEGAEUM JOURNAL ISSN NO: 0776-3808 Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay (present Mumbai) in 1947 and living in the United Kingdom is known for fictional writings and employed magical realism in most of his novels. He wrote the novel Midnight's Children even before he became a full-time writer. Though his first novel Grimus (1975) did not attract the public and literary critics. However, the very next novel he wrote in 1981, Midnight's Children launched his publicity and literary critics started noticing him. This novel won the 1981 Booker Prize and, in 1993 and 2008, was awarded the Best of the Bookers as the best novel to have received the prize in the award's 25-year history.1 Rushdie has had a string of commercially effective and critically celebrated novels. His works have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times. Thus the readers across the world have agreed that Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is the Best of the Booker. So far, Rushdie's works have produced 30 book-length studies and over 700 articles on his writing.2 Midnight's Children showcase the life of a child, born at the stroke of midnight as India attained her independence, who is talented with exceptional powers and a connection to other children born at the dawn of a new and tumultuous age in the history of the Indian sub-continent and the birth of modern India. The novel narrates crucial events in the history of India through the story of pickle-factory employee Saleem Sinai, one of the 1001 children born when India achieved her independence from England in 1947. India attained her long-anticipated independence when, at the stroke of midnight on the 14th of August, 1947 when power was transferred from Great Britain to the sovereign governments of India. The period that immediately followed independence proved unrestrainable. social and Political tensions amongst Hindus and Muslims instigated not just the division of India into two distinct countries - a catastrophic episode referred to as The Partition - but also prevalent insurrections that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. The violence that went along with the independence was a preface to the numerous wars, rebellions and governmental exploitations that afflicted the province in the years that trailed. His novel is an allegory on modern India which 1 http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/stories/1099 2 https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/salman-rushdie Volume 8, Issue 4, 2020 http://aegaeum.com/ Page No: 2534 AEGAEUM JOURNAL ISSN NO: 0776-3808 presents the Politics, religion, and fanaticism of then India which composed present India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The novel talks about 1001 children born with supernatural powers when India declared her independence from Britain. The novel deals with the destinies of two of these children- viz. Saleem and Shiva. In the novel, the protagonist Saleem Sinai who works in a pickle factory owned by Mrs. Braganza is connected to the important historical and political events and one can find an interlink between the nation and the life of the protagonist. It represents a description of the underprivileged and the oppressed sections of the society. One can note Rushdie’s attempt to recreate his past through this novel, thus the account of his life is made to overlap with the time of the National Emergency Movement and its final conclusion. Though the character of Saleem Sinai has been paralleled to the author Rushdie and the events actually happened in the life of Rushdie are mirrored in the novel like that of a carbon paper, the author has denied the notion of having written any of his characters as autobiographical by stating in one of his interviews by Ameena Meer that, "People assume that because certain things in the character are drawn from your own experience, it just becomes you. In that sense, I’ve never felt that I’ve written an autobiographical character."3 His novel is also adapted into a Canadian-British film by the same name in 2012 by Deepa Mehta, a Canadian film director. The novel unveils a tension between a pursuit for heroism, identity and individuality and even the decoy of politics. The protagonist, Saleem Sinai is born in Dr.Narlikar’s Nursing Home as the son of a rich Muslim family is due to the act committed by the nurse Mary Pereira to impress her lover Joseph D'Costa who is a socialist who hated British rule. She exchanged the babies so the child born to the rich parents will grow up in a poor family and the poor child will be privileged to be brought up by the rich family. In spite of the fact that the author Salman Rushdie is a Muslim, he is well up in Hindu legends. Even though it was time the country entered into a new phase but Saleem treated it as the Age of Darkness, Kaliyuga (age of wrath) when the dharma (charity or good deed)stands on a single leg. This statement reveals his awareness of Hindu mythologies and legends. The narrator states – 3 http://bombmagazine.org/article/1199/ Volume 8, Issue 4, 2020 http://aegaeum.com/ Page No: 2535 AEGAEUM JOURNAL ISSN NO: 0776-3808 Think of this: history, in my version, entered a new phase on August 15th, 1947-but in another version, that inescapable date is no more than one fleeting instant in the Age of Darkness, Kali-Yuga, in which the cow of morality has been reduced to standing, teeter-ingly, on a single leg! Kali- Yuga-the losing throw in our national dice-game; the worst of everything; the age when property gives a man rank, when wealth is equated with virtue, when passion becomes the sole bond between men and women, when falsehood brings success (is it any wonder, in such a time, that I too have been confused about good and evil?4 The resemblances between the narrator and his country India start with the very physical resemblance. Saleem's face resembles the map of India. Salman Rushdie has effectively narrated his novels like a canvas painting of India's history between dream and dreadful. By fusing the individual and national lives, Rushdie makes the narration of history a gossip, one of his ways of subverting historical narration. In Midnight's Children and Shame, Rushdie makes references to all the major historical and political events in India and Pakistan. Events like the Jallian Wallabag riots, declaration of Independence, partition, Chinese aggression, Indo-Pak war, Bangladesh war and the Emergency are connected with the events and incidents in Saleem's personal life.5 Salil Tripathi who was also from Mumbai just as Rushdie, wrote after he interviewed Rushdie: “We had driven down Marine Drive towards Warden Road… made our way to Westfield Estate, the inspiration for Saleem Sinai’s Methwold’s Estate in Midnight’s Children, his second novel, which had won the Booker Prize in 1981. The New York Times had gushed then, saying, “Midnight’s Children sounds like a continent finding its voice." And that generation of 4 Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie, 2013, p.269. 5 https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/129962/10/10_chapter5.pdf, p.18 Volume 8, Issue 4, 2020 http://aegaeum.com/ Page No: 2536 AEGAEUM JOURNAL ISSN NO: 0776-3808 Indians felt he had told our story in our language. We had reclaimed the language and its literature, and it was fine to speak in the mishmash sing- song bhelpuri of Hugme (Hindi-Urdu-Gujarati-Marathi-English). He had captured the zeitgeist of being a cosmopolitan Indian.6 Rushdie has written this novel from the perspective of a migrant and here the narrator himself is a migrant. As a migrant writer, he tries to present the reality in all its totality, as he has no special intentions to defend the system. Thus the novel Midnight’s Children is an interpretation of the history of India and Indian reality.
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