Introduction

Notes Introduction 1. Salman Rushdie was on born 19 June 1947; he spent his childhood in Bombay but went to England at the age of fourteen to study at Rugby. He enrolled at Cambridge University to read history and afterwards lived mainly in Great Britain, before settling in the USA. After the Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced a fatwa against Rushdie and his novel The Satanic Verses (1988) in February 1989, Rushdie lived in hiding for several years but continued to write, produ- cing The Moor’s Last Sigh among other works. 2. The editions of the novels used are Midnight’s Children (MC) 1995, London: Vintage and The Moor’s Last Sigh (MLS) 1996, London: Vintage, and all page numbers in parentheses refer to these editions. 3. For a view similar to that of Brennan, see Conner 1997: 294–7. Teresa Heffernan likewise argues that Midnight’s Children is ‘from the outset sus- picious of the very model [...] of the modern nation’ (Heffernan 2000: 472); Thompson asserts that Rushdie eventually portrays the Indian nation as a ‘bad myth’ (Thompson 1995: 21). 4. See Bernd Hirsch 2001: 56–77. Heike Hartung focuses on exploring trends in western historiography in her study on the novels by Peter Ackroyd, Graham Swift and Salman Rushdie; she also briefly juxtaposes British and Indian historiography by contrasting the representation of the history of the Indian national movement in Percival Spear’s The Oxford History of India (1981) and Sumit Sarkar’s Modern India 1885–1947 (1989), without, however, making use of this material in her discussion of Rushdie’s novels (Hartung 2002: 235–41). T. N. Dhar includes a sketch of Indian historiography in his discussion of the Indian English novel but does not integrate an analysis of historiograph- ical discourses in his interpretation of Rushdie’s novels (Dhar 1999: 61–71 & 159–206). 5. Lipscomb demonstrates that Rushdie used Stanley Wolpert’s New History of India (1977) for certain historical facts, especially historical dates and stat- istical data in Midnight’s Children (Lipscomb 1991: 183–6). But Lipscomb vastly exaggerates the significance of this material as Rushdie’s few and par- tial quotes from this concise introductory textbook on Indian history hardly amount to a ‘parody’ of Wolpert’s history (Lipscomb 1991: 181). 6. I will consistently use the name Bombay, not Mumbai, as I only refer to Bombay’s history before 1995 when the city was officially renamed Mumbai. 7. What Chatterjee refers to as ‘Puranic history’ is based on the tradition of the itihasa-purana, ‘an oral tradition for many centuries until it was com- piled in the form of the Puranas in the mid first millennium AD’ (Thapar 1993: 151). 8. As the Puranic records cannot live up to Mill’s definition of proper historiography, he repeatedly pronounces this perceived lack of history-writing a sign of the Hindus’ inferiority: ‘The offspring of a wild and ungoverned 200 Notes 201 imagination, [the Hindu legends] mark the state of a rude and credulous people, whom the marvellous delights; who cannot estimate the use of a record of past events [...] To the monstrous period of years which the legends of the Hindus involve, they ascribe events the most extravagant and unnat- ural; events not even connected in chronological series; a number of inde- pendent and incredible fictions. This people, indeed, are perfectly destitute of historical records. Their ancient literature affords not a single production to which the historical character belongs’ (Mill 1858, Vol. I: 115–16). 9. Such perceived distortion was evinced, for example, by the contemptuous portrayal of Hindus as an essentially depraved and effeminate nation in James Mill’s History of British India. Mill sharply differentiates Hindu from Muslim Indians and juxtaposes their respective traits and histories, con- cluding that Muslims were considerably less defective, especially in their manliness in contrast to Hindu effeminacy: ‘There was, in the manners of the Mohammedan conquerors of India, an activity, a manliness, an inde- pendence, which rendered it less easy for despotism to sink, among them, to that disgusting state of weak and profligate barbarism, which is the natural condition of government among such a passive people as the Hindus. [...] In truth, the Hindu, like the Eunuch, excels in the qualities of the slave’ (Mill 1858, Vol. II: 347 & 365). 10. See William Jones, ‘On the Hindus’ (1786) in Gottlob 2003a: 94–6, and Max Müller, India – What Can It Teach Us? (1883), p. 6. 11. For an analysis of Altekar’s work see Chakravarty and Roy 1988: 3–4. 12. John Strachey’s statement from 1888 is a frequently quoted example of the colonial position: ‘This is the first and most essential thing to learn about India – that there is not, and never was an India, or even any country of India, possessing, according to European ideas, any sort of unity, physical, political, social, or religious; no Indian nation, no “people of India,” of which we hear so much. [...] that men of the Punjab, Bengal, the North-West Provinces, and Madras, should ever feel that they belong to one great Indian nation, is impossible’ (Strachey 1888: 5–8). 13. See Bipan Chandra on the ‘drain theory’ and the development of what he calls ‘economic nationalism’ (Chandra 1966: 636–708 & 736–59). 14. Born and raised in England, R. P. Dutt first published his influential India To-day in London, whence it had to be smuggled into India as it had been banned by the British authorities (Gottlob 2003a: 193). 15. See Karl Marx, ‘The British Rule in India’ (1853) in Avineri 1968: 83–9. 16. R. P. Dutt nevertheless considered Gandhi as indispensable at this stage of the struggle: ‘No other leader could have bridged the gap, during this transitional period, between the actual bourgeois direction of the national movement and the awakening, but not yet conscious masses. Both for good and for evil Gandhi achieved this, and led the movement, even appearing to create it. This role only comes to an end in proportion as the masses begin to reach clear consciousness of their own interests, and the actual class forces and class relations begin to stand out clear in the Indian scene, without need of mythological concealments’ (Dutt 1940: 517). 17. See also Rudolph and Rudolph 1982: 135–6, and Rothermund 2001: 33–4. 18. R. C. Majumdar nevertheless published his eleven volume History and Culture of the Indian People (1951–1977) and criticised the Indian government for 202 Notes utilising ‘history for the spread of ideas which they have elevated to the rank of national policy [...] They do not inquire whether the facts stated are true [...] but condemn outright any historical writings which in their opin- ion are likely to go against national integration and their views about such things as eternal Hindu-Muslim fraternity, the non-existence of separate Hindu and Muslim cultures, and their fusion into one Indian culture, etc. etc.’ (Majumdar 1973: xxi). 19. The younger generation of Cambridge historians also caused controversy. The work of Christopher A. Bayly and David Washbrook came under attack because their emphasis on the continuities of pre-colonial with colonial regimes in India was interpreted as an attempt to ‘erase colonialism out of existence’ (Chatterjee 1993: 33). Particularly provocative was Washbrook’s argument that in ‘a certain sense, colonialism was the logical outcome of South Asia’s own history of capitalist development’ (Washbrook 1988: 76). For a critique of the Cambridge School see Nicholas Dirks 2001: 306–13. 20. The term ‘subaltern’ in the sense of lower classes or the masses was first used by Antonio Gramsci, whose work provided an important inspiration for the Subaltern Studies group. For Gramsci’s use of the term ‘subaltern’ see Hoare and Nowell Smith 1971: 52–5, 202 & 336–7. 21. For the textbook controversy during the Janata Government in 1977–79 see Rudolph and Rudolph 1982: 139–47. For an analysis of some of the contro- versial textbooks see Powell 1996: 195–221. 1 A Biography of the Nation 1. For an example of the former position, see John Strachey 1888: 5–6. For an example of the latter, see Percival Spear 1958: 728–35. 2. See, for example, Bipan Chandra: ‘The national movement [...] played a pivotal role in the historical process through which the Indian people got formed into a nation or a people. National leaders from Dadabhai Naoroji, Surendranath Banerjea and Tilak to Gandhiji and Nehru accepted that India was not yet a fully structured nation but a nation-in-the-making and that one of the major objectives and functions of the movement was to promote the growing unity of the Indian people through a common struggle against colonialism. In other words, the national movement was seen both as a product of the process of the nation-in-the-making and as an active agent of the process’ (Chandra et al. 1987: 23). 3. See Chandra: ‘The imperialist writers [the Cambridge School] deny that India was in the process of becoming a nation and believe that what is called India in fact consisted of religions, castes, communities and interests. [...] Nationalism, then, is seen primarily as a mere ideology which these elite groups used to legitimize their narrow ambitions and to mobilize support. The national movement was merely an instrument used by the elite groups to mobilize the masses and to satisfy their own interests’ (Chandra et al. 1987: 18). 4. See Rushdie in an interview with John Haffenden: ‘The book was conceived and begun during the Emergency, and I was very angry about that. The stain of it is on the book.

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