Imagining Bombay: the Literary Representations of a Postcolonial City by Kelly Anne Minerva A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Kelly Anne Minerva 2014 Imagining Bombay: the Literary Representations of a Postcolonial City Doctor of Philosophy 2014 Kelly Anne Minerva Graduate Department of English University of Toronto Abstract This dissertation analyses Bombay novels written in English that construct the city through the narrative manipulation of time, space, and memory. I argue that these imaginative (re)constructions of the city emphasize the limitations of narrative agency as well as the multiplicity and competition between narratives that comprise Bombay’s identity. In the first chapter, I contend that the hegemonic narratives of postcolonial nationalism, British colonialism, and Hindu fundamentalism are reductive rhetorical strategies that limit interpretations of Bombay novels to singular conceptions of the city. I argue that the novels by Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, and Vikram Chandra reveal characters who actively struggle in different ways with the multiple and coexisting identity-narratives of Bombay that they encounter in their everyday lives. In Chapter Two, I argue that in Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and The Ground Beneath Her Feet first-person narrators manipulate time, space, and memory from protected, private spaces in order to reclaim the endangered Bombay that is central to their individual identities. Chapter Three examines Mistry’s Parsi characters in Such a Long Journey and Family Matters, who have almost no power to exercise narrative agency and, consequently, must negotiate by other means the overwhelming crush of identity narratives that impinge upon their private spaces. They attempt to change these narratives ii through ordinary actions in their everyday lives. In Chapter Four, I argue that Chandra’s Sacred Games reveals how typically elided characters reinscribe themselves into Bombay’s spaces. The novel uses the threat of nuclear holocaust and the intricate political and economic relationships between mob bosses and police to sensationalize, and so represent very explicitly, characters’ engagements with hegemonic narratives. The versions of Bombay these novelists produce are at once nostalgic, utopian, and pessimistic, and my analysis provides a model for reading this city and these narratives in which characters struggle to make their voices heard amidst both the city’s dense population and its crowd of stories. iii Acknowledgments This project and related travel was generously funded by the University of Toronto Fellowship, the University of Toronto School of Graduate Studies, the Cellini Lodge of New Hyde Park, the Asian Institute, and the Indo-Canadian Association. I am grateful to Kit Dobson and Aine McGlynn, the editors of Transnationalism, Activism, Art, for including an earlier version of sections of Chapter Four in the essay collection published by the University of Toronto Press. I owe a debt of gratitude to my committee. My supervisor, Chelva Kanaganayakam, has been a constant source of guidance, patients, and friendship. He initially suggested that I write about Bombay; for this and more, I cannot thank him enough. Victor Li and Ato Quayson have continually challenged me to be a more rigorous scholar and to write with conviction. I thank them for reading drafts of the dissertation and providing valuable feedback. I feel privileged to have worked with these three scholars, under their stewardship I have learned to question my ideas without doubting myself. I am thankful to my external appraiser, Clara Joseph, for her insightful comments and positive feedback. Her critical insights, along with those of Uzoma Esonwanne, Heather Murray and my committee made my defence an engaging and productive experience which helped me discern some of the possible futures for this project. I am also grateful to the University of Toronto’s Department of English, the South Asian Collaborative Program, and the Centre for Diasporic and Transnational Studies— iv particularly the Transnational Reading Group—for the inspiration, support, and intellectual challenges they have offered. In addition to my committee, I thank Maria Assif, Neal Dolan, Andrew Dubois, Elizabeth Harvey, Katie Larson, Jeremy Lopez, Nick Mount, Gillian Northgrave, Tanuja Persaud, Marguerite Perry, and Laura Jane Wey for the personal encouragement and helpful guidance. I am also grateful to David Schmid, whose “Postcolonial London” course and mentorship at the University at Buffalo originally inspired my work on postcolonialism and city space. I would like to thank my friends and family for never failing to commiserate or celebrate with me over these many years. In particular, but without the time or space to express my gratitude properly, I would like to thank Amy Airhart-Sheldon, Sheila Bhatacharya, Prasad Bidaye, Tina Devoe, Darryl Domingo, Rohanna Green, Suzanne Grégoire, Rory McKeown, Maureen Paley, Donald Sells, Travis Shaw, Laura Stenberg, Christopher Trigg, Alisha Walters, Ira and Gillian Wells. And to all the Minervas, Clements, Hicklins, and Savareses who have supported me financially and spiritually throughout the years—thank you. Most of all, with love and gratitude, I thank Christopher Hicklin, without whom I could not “keep on keeping on”. This dissertation is for my parents, Mary Anne and Anthony Minerva, and for my great-aunts, Ida Minerva and Jeannine Clement, who championed my dreams from the very beginning and never stopped believing. v Table of Contents Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... vi List of Appendices ....................................................................................................................... viii Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1 1.1 Writing Bombay...................................................................................................................8 1.1.1 Postcolonial nationalism and the Indian urban ......................................................10 1.1.2 Colonial regimes imagine Bombay ........................................................................16 1.1.3 Creating Mumbai ...................................................................................................27 1.1.4 Imagined Bombay immortalized: fact, fiction, and the movie screen ...................32 1.2 Bombay Novels: plan of the present work .........................................................................35 1.2.1 Salman Rushdie and Bombay’s Cosmopolitanism ................................................38 1.2.2 Rohinton Mistry and Communal Bombay .............................................................42 1.2.3 Vikram Chandra and Criminal Bombay ................................................................47 1.3 Conclusion .........................................................................................................................50 Chapter 2 Salman Rushdie’s Cosmopolitanism in Childhood Bombay ........................................53 2.1 Nation-City-Self: The individuals narrating Rushdie’s India ............................................58 2.2 The Power of Migrant Storytelling ....................................................................................67 2.3 Narrating Bombay ..............................................................................................................89 2.4 Bombay’s Ground: finding stability ................................................................................100 2.5 Bombay Sighs: The Creation of Mumbai ........................................................................107 Chapter 3 Rohinton Mistry’s Parsi Bombay ................................................................................111 3.1 Categorical identities: Parsi perspectives .........................................................................114 3.2 What it means to be Parsi: categorical identities in Bombay...........................................123 vi 3.3 Narratives collide: Parsi Bombay ....................................................................................132 3.4 Narrating Parsi Identity ....................................................................................................138 3.5 Making a Bombay house a home .....................................................................................157 3.6 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................168 Chapter 4 Vikram Chandra’s Criminal Bombay .........................................................................173 4.1 Authentic Bombay Fiction: Chandra’s chronicle of the imagined and the lived city ......175 4.2 Dead Criminal: a haunted perspective of Bombay ..........................................................179 4.3 Detecting perspective, discovering Bombay....................................................................195 4.4 Walking the beat ..............................................................................................................203 4.5