UNIT TWO: Salman Rusdie and “the Imaginary Homeland”

2.1. Introduction
This unit introduces one of the greatest postcolonial and international writers of
the contemporary world, whose work aims mainly at presenting his homeland,
India, to the world. Rushdie is acutely aware of the realities of the post-
independence India and, through the devices of historiographic metafiction,
explores their effect on the human identity. The complexity of Rushdie’s work is
given not only by the infinite and shifting aspects of the world he is describing, but
also by the combination of literary and discursive devices. The unit presents
Rushdie’s two best-known novels, “Midnight’s Children” and “The Satanic
Verses”.

2.2. Competences
On completion of UNIT TWO students will become familiar with important
aspects of the work of India’s greatest literary voice and will discern some aspects
of culture and history that are reconstructed in a fictional way. Students will
discern postcolonial themes and postmodern techniques, will identify motifs,
intertexts and types of discourse, will be able to analyze fragments and make
comments.

Study time for UNIT TWO: 3 hours

2.3. The Life and Work of Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) on 19 June 1947. He went to school in Bombay
and at Rugby in England, and read History at King's College, Cambridge, where he joined the
Cambridge Footlights theatre company. After graduating, he lived with his family who had moved to
Pakistan in 1964, and worked briefly in television before returning to England, beginning work as a
copywriter for an advertising agency. His first novel, Grimus, was published in the year 1975.

His second novel, the acclaimed Midnight's Children, was published in 1981. It won the Booker
Prize for Fiction, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction), an Arts Council Writers'
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Award and the English-Speaking Union Award, and in 1993 was judged to have been the 'Booker of
Bookers', the best novel to have won the Booker Prize for Fiction in the award's 25-year history. The
novel narrates key events in the history of India through the story of pickle-factory worker Saleem
Sinai, one of 1001 children born exactly as India won independence from Britain in the year 1947.

The publication in 1988 of his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, lead to accusations of blasphemy
against Islam and demonstrations by Islamist groups in India and Pakistan. The orthodox Iranian
leadership issued a fatwa against Rushdie on 14 February 1989 - effectively a sentence of death - and
he was forced into hiding under the protection of the British government and police. The book itself
centres on the adventures of two Indian actors, Gibreel and Saladin, who fall to earth in Britain when
their Air India jet explodes.

Salman Rushdie continued to write and publish books, including a children's book, Haroun and the
Sea of Stories (1990), a warning about the dangers of story-telling that won the Writers' Guild Award
(Best Children's Book), and which he adapted for the stage. There followed a book of essays entitled
Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 (1991); East, West (1994), and “The Moor’s
Last Sigh”. (1995).

The Ground Beneath Her Feet, published in 1999, re-works the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in the
context of modern popular music. His novel, Fury, set in New York at the beginning of the third
millennium, was published in 2001. He is also the author of a travel narrative, The Jaguar Smile
(1987), an account of a visit to Nicaragua in 1986.

Salman Rushdie became a Knight Bachelor for services to literature in 2007. This stirred numerous
negative reactions in Iran and Pakistan. In 2008, his latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence
(2008), was published and Midnight's Children won the 'Best of the Booker' Prize. The book was
also turned into a play. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He mixes magical
realism with historical fiction, and a dominant theme of his work is the story of the many
connections, disruptions and migrations between the Eastern and Western world. His two greatest
works have similarities to works written from ancient times onward like Apuleius’ “The Golden
Donkey”, “1001 Arabian Nights”, Joyce’s “Ulysses”, Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy”.

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2.4. Midnight’s Children

Saleem Sinai, the narrator of Midnight’s Children, opens the novel by explaining that he was born on
midnight, August 15, 1947, at the exact moment India gained its independence from British rule. At
the age of 31 he thinks that his body is beginning to crack and he is close to death so he begins
telling his story to Padma, his faithful companion.

Saleem’s story begins in Kashmir, thirty-two years before his birth, in 1915. There, Saleem’s
grandfather, a doctor named Aadam Aziz, begins treating Naseem, the woman who becomes
Saleem’s grandmother. He can only see the parts of her body that he treats through perforated sheet.
He finally sees her face in 1918. They get married and move to Agra where they have three
daughters, Alia, Mumtaz, and Emerald, and two sons, Mustapha and Hanif. Aadam becomes a
follower of the optimistic activist Mian Abdullah, whose anti-Partition stance eventually leads to his
assassination. Following Abdullah’s death, Aadam hides Abdullah’s frightened assistant, Nadir
Khan. Nadir Khan falls in love with Mumtaz, and the two get married in secret. He runs away when
Emerald, tells an officer in the Pakistani army about his hiding place in the house. Abandoned by her
husband, Mumtaz agrees to marry Ahmed Sinai, a young merchant who until then had been courting
her sister, Alia.

Mumtaz changes her name to Amina and moves to Delhi with her new husband. Pregnant, she goes
to a fortune-teller who tells her that her boy will never be older or younger than his country and
claiming that he sees two heads, knees and a nose. After a terrorist organization burns down
Ahmed’s factory, Ahmed and Amina move to Bombay. They buy a house from a departing
Englishman, William Methwold, who owns an estate at the top of a hill. Wee Willie Winky, a poor
man who entertains the families of Methwold’s Estate, says that his wife, Vanita, is also expecting a
child soon. Amina and Vanita both go into labor, and, at exactly midnight, each woman delivers a
son. Meanwhile, a midwife at the nursing home, Mary Pereira switches the nametags of the two
newborn babies, thereby giving the poor baby a life of privilege and the rich baby a life of poverty.
Feeling guilty, she becomes Saleem’s nanny.

Saleem discovers that he can hear the voices of the other children born at midnight on the same day.
The 1,001 midnight’s children—a number reduced to 581 by their tenth birthday—all have magical
powers, which vary according to how close to midnight they were born. Saleem discovers that Shiva,
the boy with whom he was switched at birth, was born with a pair of enormous, powerful knees and
a gift for combat. Saleem undergoes a nose operation and loses his telepathic powers but gains a
powerful sense of smell with which he can smell people’s emotions. Saleem’s entire family moves to
Pakistan after India’s military loss to China. His younger sister, now known as Jamila Singer,

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becomes the most famous singer in Pakistan. His entire family except Jamila dies in the war between
India and Pakistan. During the air raids, Saleem gets hit in the head by his grandfather’s silver
spittoon, which erases his memory entirely. Relieved of his memory, Saleem is reduced to an
animalistic state. He is used in the military but scared of the atrocities he sees he flees to the jungle
of the Sundarbans where he regains all of his memory except the knowledge of his name. After
leaving the jungle, Saleem finds Parvati-the-witch, one of midnight’s children, who reminds him of
his name and helps him escape back to India. He lives with her in the magician’s ghetto, along with a
snake charmer named Picture Singh. Saleem is forced to marry Parvati after she becomes
impregnated with Shiva. Parvati dies while Shiva captures Saleem and brings him to a forced
sterilization camp. There, Saleem divulges the names of the other midnight’s children. One by one,
the midnight’s children are sterilized, effectively destroying the powers that threaten the prime
minister. Later, however, Indira Gandhi loses the first election she holds.

Saleem goes to Bombay where he finds Mary who owns a chutney factory at which Padma stands
guarding the gate. His story complete, Saleem decides to marry Padma, on his thirty-first birthday.
Saleem prophesies that he will die on that day, disintegrating into millions of specks of dust.

Salman Rushdie belongs to the postmodern and postcolonial literary currents. Postcolonial texts react
to the discourses of colonization approaching issues of de-colonization or the political and cultural
independence of people formerly subjugated to a colonial rule. In “Midnight Children” (1981),
Rushdie writes about India’s transition from British colonialism to independence. The novel has been
described as a postmodern, magic-realist novel as well as a historiographic metafiction, term
invented by Linda Hutcheon. Rushdie is preoccupied with showing the relations and migrations
between the East and the West. He uses postmodern devices like intertextuality and approaches
postcolonial themes like: identity, memory, racism. Rushdie mixes the Eastern tradition with the
Western one. As an Indian living in Britain and writing in English, he has experienced both cultures
and enriches his works with elements from both. From the Eastern traditions he borrows the Indian
story-telling techniques and traditional oral narratives. The book resembles “1001 Nights”, one story
developing into another, forming a chain. Fantasy, the supernatural, amazing and exotic scenery,
strange traditions are all part of the storytelling package. Saleem, the first person narrator, is a
modern Scheherazade. He uses magic realism, which is a category of Indian prose which combines
fact and fiction and a multitude of myths which function as a background to some real historical
facts. Padma plays the role of the listener, she listens to Saleem’s story and sometimes intervenes
being skeptical about the fantastical accounts. This is another postmodern feature, as postmodern
writers encourage readers to get involved in the narrative and give their own interpretations. Even if
the events are altered by fiction, the names of the Indian political figures are real. Rushdie goes back
and forth from history to fiction, from truth to lies.
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Rushdie is influenced also by the Western tradition and the works of Cervantes, Swift, Melville,
Joyce, Sterne. The story of Saleem and the manner in which it is told mostly resembles Laurence
Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy”. Both Tristram and Shandy sometimes fail to distinguish between truth
and fiction, their memory plays tricks on them. They attempt to be perfectly objective but they
realize they cannot. The resemblance between Saleem and Tristram is also evident through the size
and aspect of the nose. The nose and the name are the ones which determine a child’s destiny
according to Tristram’s father. They both write because they feel the imminence of death and both
fall victims of history. Memory is a very important theme for postcolonialism and Rushdie links this
theme to his use of intertextuality. In Damian Grant’s view regarding “Midnight’s Children”, he sees
the novel as

“a modern odyssey, an epic navigation through these alternative realities: myth and history, memory and
document, moonlight and daylight; the reflections of art, the centripetal and centrifugal dynamics of the self; the
babel of languages, the alternating (and competing) religious and political understandings of the world” (Grant,
1999: 38).

Rushdie uses fantasy to produce intensified images of reality. Fiction must find ways of making
reality more intense. A work of art does not have to be one hundred percent accurate as critics like
E.L Doctorow schowed. Rushdie stresses the fact that the human mind and memory are subject to
forgetfulness, they are not perfect and therefore there are errors in the narrative which make the
prose seem more real. In his own essay, “Unreliable Narration in Midnight Children”, Rushdie
stated:

“Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems
– but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.” (Rushdie, 1995:164)

Rushdie found one of the most interesting and original metaphors for history, what some may even
consider a perfect metaphor. He compared history to “pickle jars”. History is various versions of
reality preserved in jars (books) in which reality is destroyed according to the subjectivity of the
narrator. The subjectivity of the reader adds a certain flavor.

Returning to the concept of magic realism where magical elements are explained like normal
occurrences which allows the "real" and the "fantastic" to be accepted in the same stream of thought,
this genre best suits the project of presenting India that is filled with belief in magic, myths and
superstitions. Linda Hutcheon considered magic realism the point of conjunction between post-
modernism and post-colonialism. The novel itself begins like a fairytale: “Once upon a time”
suggesting a level of fantasy but it is joined by real historical events. Saleem is born at the stroke of
midnight, August 15th when India acquires its independence. He and 1000 other children born
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between midnight and 1 A.M possess magical powers. Saleem comes to stand for India itself; he is
an embodiment of India. He possesses a big nose that is magical and proves to be a sort of device for
telepathic powers with which he communicates with the other Midnight Children. Shiva, with which
he is exchanged at birth is his diabolical other and an antagonist. He possesses great strength and has
strong knees (their powers were prophesized before their birth). Saleem’s teacher tells him that his
nose is like a map of India (which at that time included Pakistan and Shrilanka). From the beginning
of the novel we find out that his body is splitting and cracking. This deterioration suggests India’s
division. Although India escapes military British rule and is no longer assaulted from the outside,
inner conflicts divide her Pakistan and Bangladesh become independent of India).

There is a battle between tradition and modernity, between the Orient who wants to keep its
traditions and the Occident who attacks the Orient with globalization and consumerism which prove
more powerful than military attacks. The women like Naseem are keepers of tradition, the ones who
transmit the stories and the ancestral wisdom. Aadam tries to impose Western values on Naddem but
does not succeed. Another keeper of tradition is Tai, the boatman, a relic of what India was and
possibly will never be again. He is one of the last who live according to the old sayings and who tries
to keep the young from being perverted by the West. Tai seems to be as old as time itself. When
Aadam asks him how old he is, he answers:

“I have watched the mountains being born. […] I saw that Isa, that Christ, when he came to Kashmir. It is your
history I am keeping in my head. Once it was set down in old lost books. I once met an officer from the army of
Iskander the Great (Rushdie, 1995: 98)

On the opposite side, those who wish to trample upon the traditionalism sustained by these few
keepers of tradition, there are the former colonizers who still leave their mark upon India as well as
some Indians like Aadam who not only give up traditions but even lose their faith in God. Methwold,
a rich Englishmen sells his house to Saleem’s family but while they are living together they have to
adopt a British way of life. Goonetilleke notices Methwold’s duplicity and shrewdness when it
comes to the transfer of social and political power. Through his harsh demands

“Methwold is only attempting to control India through imposing Western patterns of culture – and,
consequently, behavior – on the power elite of post-Independence India. Actually, the subtext has it that power
has been transferred to those already inclined towards the West, the Anglicized Indians. Methwold’s buyers
agree to accept his terms and even follow his routine regarding habits such as the cocktail hour because they
were of a cast of mind already predisposed to such manners. Imperialism does not end when the imperialists
leave.” (Goonetilleke, 1998: 26)

The Midnight Children could embody what is good about India and represent India’s hope but none
of them except Saleem recognizes his mission so India’s last hope dies, as they are all sterilized and
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degraded (most of them join the circus and Saleem is used in the military like a dog for his
exceptional nose). Saleem which represents the hero, a Christ-like figure has the fate of rescuing
India but he fails and Shiva, his nemesis that is like an evil twin brother wins. The double-headed
child that is foretold to Saleem’s mother is an allegory of the divided India and of its two religions,
Muslim and Hindu.

Apart from the themes of history and memory, another major postmodern as well as postcolonial
theme is that of identity. Saleem’s identity is very unstable, as is India’s identity, perpetually
changing. The ones he thought were his parents are not. He is in fact the son of an Englishmen,
therefore a hybrid. He loses his memory and then regains it, his body literally cracks and tears up (he
loses part of his finger, part of his scalp, his nose is operated), disintegrates as does India’s. At
different times in the novel he is called different names. Identity proves an impure condition. As
Naseem’s body is first seen by Aadam only through a perforated sheet, only certain parts visible, so
only glimpses of the real India may be obtained. We only have the illusion that we see everything. In
the end, Saleem abandons the path of India’s savior and wants to follow his own path and leave his
own life and search for his true identity, a quest that many characters of postcolonial novels
undertake. However, Saleem knows that he will soon disintegrate after having attempted to carry the
burden of his country. With the MCC (Midnight Children’s Conference), Saleem militated for
plurality and diversity but the nation’s desire for singularity or purity—whether of religion or culture
wins and breeds violence and intolerance. Through this allegorical novel filled with magic and
imagination, Rushdie beautifully depicts India’s condition prior to and especially after obtaining
Independence showing that power divides a nation whether it is unjustly exercised from the outside
or the inside. However tormented, the oppressed will always find a way to maintain their roots and
fight for their beliefs and hope for a better future.

2.5. The Satanic Verses

The Satanic Verses (1988) tells the story of Gibreel Farishta who rises from being a pauper in
Bombay to a popular filmstar playing Hindu deities in Bollywood mythologicals. The humor in the
novel commences when Gibreel refuses to make love to his female admirers with the elephant snout
on, which he has used as a prop for playing Lord Ganesha in a movie and which his fans have come
to fancy. He complains that an acting career in Bombay is quite less of acting and much more of
frantic travel between studios.

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It also tells the story of the misplaced Saladin Chamcha, who develops an English accent so refined
and immaculate that he lends his voice to British radio shows. He shuns his father who loathes books
and had sent him away from Bombay to study in Britain. He returns after a long period of absence
only to find his town has changed tremendously.

On his return trip to UK, Saladin Chamcha meets Gibreel Farishta who has absconded in order to
meet his flame Annie Cone, the Mount Everest conquerer whom he courted in Bombay. The plane
gets hijacked and all but the two protagonists of the novel - Chamcha and Farishta - are dead. The
two are washed ashore on the waves of the English Channel, only to find that there has been a major
change of roles. Gibreel suffers hallucinations of being an archangel, while Saladin is transformed
into a chimera representing the devil.

Saladin miraculously recovers from the transmogrification and plots his revenge against Gibreel for
refusing recognition and help when Saladin was led into custody by policemen. He plots the murder
of Annie Cone at the hands of the suspicious and jealous Gibreel Farishta himself. In the climax,
Gibreel shoots himself when he realizes what a mistake he hascommitted.

As mentioned above, Rushdie borrows from both the Eastern tradition and the Western one. Whereas
“Midnight Children” resembles more Sterne’s masterpiece, “Tristram Shandy”, “The Satanic Verses
has many influences, Rushdie being inspired by many great authors beginning from Antiquity to
modernism. In Damian Grant’s view upon analyzing “The Satanic Verses” he finds striking
resemblances to various literary masterpieces:

“[…] The Satanic Verses does indeed have intriguing resemblances, not least in the nature of the disintegration
against which the characters are forced to struggle in order to survive, and the disconcerting ‘doubleness’ and
reversibility of the discourse. […] parallels may be found within it […] the Bible and the Koran, the Indian
epics, Sufi texts, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Blake, Dickens, Bulgakov, Beckett – and of course Joyce himself.
Not to mention the cinematic tradition of three continents, and a representative swathe of contemporary (that is
to say, 1980s) British, Indian, and other cultures”. (Grant, 1999: 72)

Grant notices the resemblances between “A City Visible but Unseen” (chapter in “The Satanic
Verse”) and “Wandering Rocks” (section in “Ulysses). In Rushdie’s novel we have Saladin Chamcha
who explores Thatcher’s Britain. From the point of view of the plot, of what happens in the narrative,
we have a similar situation in Apuleius’s “The Golden Ass” In both stories the main hero
metamorphoses into an animal and both return to their normal selves once they realized their faults in
life. Rushdie’s humor also resembles that of Apuleius. The subject of transformation is presented in a
fascinating way by the imaginative author of The Satanic Verses. Salman Rushdie takes his cue from

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the literary style of magic realism by transforming his characters into mystical creatures in an
otherwise ordinary, non-magical setting. The transformations of Gibreel Farishta and Saladin
Chamcha are not only magical, they are symbolic as well as both men have previously been judged
by their outward appearances in life.

Grant also finds similarities with T.S Eliot’s “Wasteland”. In his masterpiece, Eliot presents a
decayed London where nature is under decay and people themselves are corrupt and depraved.

From the point of view of the split personalities of the characters, Grant draws a parallel with Louis
Stevenson’s “Dr Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde” where we can see how one person metamorphosizes from
good and evil, from human to animal. Many have found Stevenson’s tale to exemplify Freud’s
theory of the unconscious. Freud divided the mind into the conscious mind or ego and two parts of
the unconscious: the id or instincts and the superego. He used the idea of the unconscious in order to
explain certain kinds of neurotic behavior. In his theory, the unconscious refers to that part of mental
functioning of which subjects make themselves unaware. For Freud, the unconscious was a
repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful
emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression. Hyde comes to represent
man’s unconscious and what Dr. Jeckyl does is give life to his darkest instincts and turn off what
would have censored his instincts in society. All humans have a dark side which they strive to keep
hidden. Again, because of the use of intertextuality and borrowings from Western and Eastern
culture, “The Satanic Verses” is a postmodern novel in its narrative technique and literary devices.

“The Satanic Verses”, like “Midnight Children” also belongs to the large umbrella of postcolonial
literature. The book is a study in alienation, loss of identity inside migration. The Satanic Verses is
about identity, alienation, rootlessness, brutality, compromise, and conformity. It describes the
experience of migrants, disillusioned with both cultures: the one they are in and the one they join.
Rushdie confirmed the fact that the book is not about Islam but about migration, metamorphosis,
divided selves, love, death, London and Bombay.

The same Damian Grant states that the novel is difficult having all the characteristics of a
postmodern writing. The themes dealt with are: personal and national/ethnic and the relationship
between good and evil. The novel refers to racism and ethnic discrimination:

“The Satanic Verses is a novel bristling with difficulty. This is due not so much to the cloud of controversy that
has settled over it, as to the complexity of the novel itself, which makes the most disinterested reading a
challenge. This complexity is no mere provocative, postmodernist ‘top dressing’ but arises from the nature and
intensity of the metaphysical speculation that lies at the heart of the work. There is a dense, nuclear fusion of
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 ideas, grouped around the nature of modern identity, personal and national/ethnic; the relationship between our
instinct for good and evil; the implications of this for our understanding of human disposition and potentialities;
the nature of the ‘reality’ within which we are required to live out our lives”. (Grant, 1999: 71)

Although the two main characters are Indians who have adopted the western set of values and
mentality, they still have to deal with the authorities’ discrimination and aggressiveness. Saladin,
even from a young age rejected the Indian set of values imposed upon him by the community and din
not like India’s superstitious nature. After living in England for five years, he believes that going
back from West to East would be a regression. Both his father and his mother, Nasreen are against
him picking up Western values. Five years after he is sent to Britain, Saladin’s mother dies. His
father remarries another woman which also bares the name of Nasreen. Saladin and his father cannot
get along and his father sees his son as a freak who has nothing in common with his homeland.
Saladin finds spiritual comfort in Zeeny Vakil, like Saleem found in Parvati. She works in a hospital
(The Breach Candy Hospital) and has a more integralistic view when it comes to judging Indians.
She doesn’t forget that she too is Indian and that be they good or bad they are all her compatriots and
moreover human beings entitled to have a place of their own under the sun. With the help of Zeeny,
Saladin embarks on a journey of self-discovery, a journey to rediscover his roots. The search for
one’s identity in a confused world is very popular in postcolonial literature.

Later on in the novel Rushdie tries to make a description of Mecca seen as a perverted city.
Unfortunately it is no longer a holly city but a decadent and corrupt one ruled by businessmen. This
is one of the issues which have made the Islamic fundamentalists condemn the writer. Just like in
Eliot’s “Waste Land”, the world depicted here has lost everything that was sacred. The book is
entirely symbolic and represents an initiating journey into ones traditions and customs. Both Gibreel
and Saladin traded their Eastern culture for the Western one and chose a different identity so they
could fit in a new world. In search for fame they actually managed to exile themselves from their
country and their roots. Zeeny is the only one who sees this.

In “The Satanic Verses”, Rushdie uses the magic realism as he did in “Midnight’s Children”. The
world that he creates is a world where history, dreams, magic, religion, superstitions meet. His
characters are part of two worlds: a real one and an imaginary one, they are transformed from man to
animal, Gibreel suffers hallucinations of being an archangel, while Saladin is transformed into a goat
representing the devil especially through the horns it posesses. From friends they turn into enemies.
Grant identifies in the structure of the book images typical of Indian and Western folklore, but also
images based on the Koran and the Bible and relates the structuring of the chapters to magical
realism as well:

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 “[…] the structure of the novel, in its nine sections, and Gibreel’s role as ‘time traveller’ (and something more)
between them. It has been observed that this novel about disintegration and reintegration is itself divided via its
odd-and-even-numbered sections. The first four of the ‘odd’ sections, I to VII […] take place in London, while
the last, IX, is set in Bombay. The four ‘even’ sections […] contain the magical or dream material. Section II
(‘Mahound’) tells the story of the original revelation to the prophet (including the notorious episode of the
‘satanic verse’ themselves); section IV, (‘Aiesha’) begins with a brief encounter with a sinister Imam who
resembles Khomeini in exile, before moving on to the story of the girl Ayesha, who lives on butterflies and
proposes a pilgrimage from Pakistan to Mecca (simply walking into the sea); section VI (‘Return to Jahilia’)
relates the story of the establishment of Islam itself, and the power-broking that goes on in the interests of the
‘Idea’; while section VIII, (‘The Parting of the Arabian Sea’) recapitulates the outcome of Ayesha’s pilgrimage.
The key structural (and psychological) feature is that it is Gibreel, as archangel – specifically, angel of the
recitation, he who dictates the word of God to the prophet – who ‘dreams’ the other, magical narratives. And the
handling of the interface between the ‘two’ texts, two levels of reality, is the supreme test of Rushdie’s skill as a
narrator”. (Grant, 1999: 74)

When the two characters fall down from the plane and are metamorphosized they still attempt to
explain everything rationally having acquired the Western rationalistic thinking by asking different
questions. The characters will have to learn to live with the strange and inexplicable, just like the
reader has to accept the conventions of magic realism. The transformation from human to animal is
not only physical but social. and it depicts the cruel realities orientals have to endure before being
accepted by the western society. Where Gibreel and Saladin end up the world is very much aware of
the supernatural and treats it as if it were ordinary. After they are taken to the police and interrogated,
they are taken to a hospital where apparently people have also been transformed into animals:

“But now he was becoming aware of many other sounds, as unsettling as the first. It seemed to him that he could
hear all sorts of animal voices: the snorting of bulls, the chattering of monkeys, even the pretty-polly mimic-
squawkc of parrots or talking budgerigars. […]His nose informed him that the sanatorium, or whatever the place
called itself, was also beginning to stink to the heavens; jungle and farmyard odours mingled with a rich aroma
similar to that of exotic spices sizzling in clarified butter – coriander, turmeric, cinnamon, cardamoms, cloves.”
(Rushdie, 1989: 217)

When Saladin tries to convince the policemen that he is a British citizen they don’t believe him and
even after they confirm the truth, they still discriminate against him. He thus comes to realize that his
father was right. However hard he may try to integrate in the western society he will always be an
outsider. This is tied to the main theme of the novel that of alienation and loss of identity through
migration. What Rushdie attempts to show is the difficulties and hardships the Indians and any other
formerly colonized state goes through in postcolonial times, how hard it is for them to maintain their
identity in a world suffering from massive globalization and capitalism. Despite being colonized, the
Indians have not given up their culture and their religious beliefs. Rushdie shows what is beautiful

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both in the Orient and the Occident but also what is to be condemned in both and he does this
masterfully, being one of the greatest postcolonial writers of our time.

2.6. Salman Rushdie as a postcolonial writer

Salman Rushdie belongs to the great postcolonial current. In his novels, he deals with issues related
to the experience of the Indians who were former colonized by the British Empire. His characters
attempt to articulate their identity and reclaim their past in other terms than the colonial other.
Postcolonialism being related to postmodernism, Rushdie uses postmodernist techniques. He uses
intertextuality in both “Midnight’s Children” and “The Satanic Verses”. He borrows both from
Western tradition and from his own roots, Eastern tradition. He is inspired by artists such as
Apuleius, Sterne, Joyce, [Link], and Stevenson. He refers both to the Bible and to the Koran.
Although “The Satanic Verses” was attacked by the Islam because of his mention of the satanic
verses and what Islamic leaders considered as blasphemy to their creed, his novel is not in fact about
Islam but about migration and metamorphosis, the search for identity, about London and Bombay.

His novels have been termed magic-realist because in them he mixes reality with dreams, the natural
with the supernatural. In magic-realist novels the reader accepts a certain convention that enables
him to rethink the world in a manner in which the supernatural is deemed not only possible but it is
in fact quite ordinary. By using folklore and myth from Indian culture, a narrative style that reminds
of “1001 Arabian Nights”, he makes his prose exotic and magical and breaks away from the
traditional English narratives. He deals with important postcolonial themes like memory, identity,
otherness, racism and ethnic discrimination in a comic, satirical manner that reminds of Swift. Magic
realism is ideal to formulate the postcolonial allegory of man’s destiny as being the nation’s destiny
(thus in “Midnight’s Children”, Saleem is the embodiment of India and whatever rupture or
degradation India suffers, he suffers also.

Rushdie does not critique Western thought and does not state that what Britain did to India is
unforgivable. He tries to show both cultures in as objective a manner as possible. However, what he
suggests is that the former-colonized individual must not lose his ethnic identity and must not lose
touch with his Motherland. In order to find one’s identity one must trace his roots and affirm his
national identity. What characters like Saladin must learn is that they must take the best from both
worlds: the culture and knowledge from the Western thought and the traditions, religion and beliefs
(even if those beliefs include magic and superstition) of the Eastern thought. Indians must learn that
they must not lose their origins.

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References:

Foucault, M. (1998) ‘The Archeology of Knowledge’ in Rivkin, J. & Ryan, M.(eds.) Literary
Theory: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers pp 421-428

Goonetilleke, D.C.R.A. (1998) Salman Rushdie. MacMillan, London

[Link] (21.04.2010)

2.7. Summary
Salman Rushdie’s fictional work displays a rare complexity and depth. His novels
use postmodern devices and vision, magic realist elements, a diversity of intertextual
references, historical background, and are informed by a postcolonial perspective.
“Midnight’s Children” is a novel about the creation of the identity of independent
India, a country that grows after the colonial experience with a lot of pain and
turmoil. “The Satanic Verses” continues the exploration of human identity in
connection with migration and metamorphosis, presenting both the world of London
and of Bombay. The postcolonial issues Rushdie deals with are presented in a
comic, often satirical manner, so that the novel also becomes a form of
entertainment.

2.8. End of Unit Assessment

Answer the following questions:

• What kind of novel is “Midnight’s Children”? What arguments can you

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 • How does magic realism function in “Midnight’s Children” and “The
Satanic Verses”?
• What intertexts can one identify in “The Satanic Verses”?
• What kind of journey does Saladin embark on?

Example

In the fragment below taken from the end of Midnight’s Children, the narrator, Saleem Sinai
speaks about his self-assumed task of making a truthful account of the events marking India’s
post-independence history. He chooses the metaphor of pickling, called “chutnification” in
order to describe the process and implications of history writing.

My special blends: I’ve been saving them up. Symbolic value of the pickling process: all the six
hundred million eggs which gave birth to the population of India could fit inside a single, standard-
sized pickle-jar; six hundred million spermatozoa could be lifted on a single spoon. Every pickle-jar
(you will forgive me if I become florid for a moment) contains, therefore, the most exalted
possibilities: the feasibility of the chutnification of history; the grand hope of the pickling time! I,
however, have pickled chapters. Tonight, by screwing the lid firmly on to a jar bearing the legend
‘Special Formula No.30: Abracadabra’, I reach the end of my long-winded autobiography; in words
and pickles, I have immortalized my memories, although distortions are inevitable in both methods.
We must live, I’m afraid, with the shadows of imperfection.
… What is required for chutnification? Raw materials obviously – fruit, vegetable, fish, vinegar,
spices. Daily visits from Koli women with their saris hitched up between their legs…But also eyes,
blue as ice, which are undeceived by the superficial blandishments of fruit – which can see
corruption beneath citrus-skin. And above all, a nose capable of discerning the hidden languages of
what-must-be-pickled, its humours and messages and emotions… at Braganza Pickles I supervise the
production of Mary’s legendary recipes; but there are also my special blends, in which, thanks to the
powers of my drained nasal passages, I am able to include memories, dreams, ideas, so that once
they enter mass-production all who consume them will know what pepperpots achieved in Pakistan,
or how it felt to be in the Sundarbans… believe don’t believe but it’s true. Thirty jars stand upon a
shelf, waiting to be unleashed upon the amnesic nation.
(And beside them, one jar stands empty)

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 The process of revision should be constant and endless; don’t think I’m satisfied with what
I’ve done! Among my unhappinesses: an overly-harsh taste from those jars containing memories of
my father; a certain ambiguity in the love-flavour of ‘Jamila-Singer’… Sometimes, in the pickles’
version of history, Saleem appears to have known too little; at other times too much… yes, I should
revise and revise, improve and improve; but there is neither the time, nor the energy. I am obliged to
offer no more than this stubborn sentence: It happened that way because that’s how it happened.
… To pickle is to give immortality, after all: fish, vegetables, fruit hang embalmed in spice-and-
vinegar; a certain alteration, a slight intensification of taste, is a small matter, surely? The art is to
change the flavour in degree, but not in kind; and above all (in my thirty jars and a jar) to give it
shape and form – that is to say, meaning. (I have mentioned my fear of absurdity).
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.
One empty jar… how to end?...Happily, with Mary in her teak rocking-chair and a son who
has begun to speak? Amid recipes, and thirty jars with chapter-headings for names?...
… No, that won’t do, I shall have to write the future as I have written the past, to set it down
with the absolute certainty of a prophet. But the future cannot be preserved in a ja; one jar must
remain empty…
… I hear lies spoken in the night, anything you want to be you kin be, the greatest lie of all, cracking
now, fission of Saleem, I am the bomb of Bombay, watch me explode, bones splitting breaking
beneath the awful pressure of the crowd, bag of bones falling down down down, just as once at
Jallianwala, but Dyer seems not to be present today, no Merchurochrome, only a broken creature
spilling pieces of itself into the street, because I have been so-many too-many persons, life unlike
syntax allows one more than three, and at last somewhere the striking of a clock, twelve chimes,
release.
Yes, they will trample me underfoot, the numbers marching one two three, four hundred
million five hundred six, reducing me to specks of voiceless dust, just as, all in good time, they will
trample my son who is not my son, and his son who will not be his, and his who will not be his, until
the thousand and first generation, until a thousand and one midnights have bestowed their terrible
gifts and a thousand and one children have died, because it is the privilege and the curse of
midnight’s children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked
into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace. (pp. 459-
463, Salman Rushdie – Midnight’s Children . 1995, London: Vintage).

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