Aliasgar Hussain
Ms. Pugliese
ENG4U
27/05/2016
Midnight’s Children – Parable of a Nation Salman Rushdie’s post-colonial dictation of historical fiction is enriched by thematic adaptations of magical realism, metaphysics, and a miraculous perception to refract India’s struggle as truly a birth which establishes a shift in age. Rushdie’s satirical literary approach is stylistically equivalent to Voltaire’s Candide, and Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, but it implements particular abstract concepts through an allegorical structure. By using a diverse variety of characters, Rushdie is able to feature ciphers or metaphors for qualities, sins, behaviors, and specifically historical events which are materialised through character actions, appearances, and speech. The synchronized birth of Saleem Sinai and the nation of India, sets off a relation between the two, as the events that proceed are concurrent to both. Saleem’s encounters are magnified at a larger scale to re-enact post-colonial Indian history. Rushdie's allegory is not of the country as that might be imagined to subsist beyond the world of texts, but of the nation as already mediated by the pretext of national history. This is Indian history in its canonical form. Significant Indian historical events which shaped the nation’s cultural, political, and social position are all materialised, such as the violent process of secularization/partition, India’s genealogy, and the national emergency of 1975. To clearly understand the topical and historical references embedded in text, it is essential to be familiar with pre/post-colonial and post-partition history of the Indian sub-continent. The novel is in first-person past tense unreliable narration, as Saleem reflects upon the details of his life, in his account of the Free Islam Convocation opposed to the Muslim League and the Partition of India; Rushdie draws attention to the strategy of literalization. Saleem’s unreliable memory hence encapsulates a potentially artificial consideration of events; he misplaced Gandhi’s death, an obviously seminal moment in India’s history, as well as willfully misremembers the date of an election. He frets over the accuracy of his story and worries about future errors he might make. Yet, at the same time, after acknowledging his error, Saleem decides to maintain his version of events despite historical inaccuracies. Saleem’s misrememberance of events is particularly due to his diagnosis of amnesia part way through the novel. It is often forgotten that not all Muslims were in favour of Partition. The Free Islam Convocation was a prominent political party, emphasizing secularism; their ideals were rather suppressed, as Saleem says to the reader: If you don't believe me, check. Find out about Mian Abdullah and his Convocations. Discover how we've swept his story under the carpet ... then let me tell how Nadir Khan, his lieutenant, spent three years under my family's rugs. (50. Rushdie)
We know that Pakistan emerged as a nation morphing from India, and achieving its independence swiftly, but it was a politically conservative choice. The segregation of the two nations was to prevent religious conflicts, and skirmishes such as the Amritsar Massacre, but it appeared as an anti-secular case to depart. The recollection of those Muslims who supported a secular state characterized by religious tolerance that has been rudely shoved "under the carpet," and it is literally to a cellar under the carpet that Nadir Khan (representative of The Free Islam Convocation) was concealed. Nadir khan overtly signifies the pro-secular Muslims whose principles were marginalized during the Indian partition. The FIC was essentially stuck between a rock and a hard place, as they were specifically targeted by pro-Muslim and pro-Hindu separatists. Their message of open correspondence, cohesion, and harmony was swiftly swept under the carpet, as Nadir Khan fled his premises after the FIC leader was assassinated. Nadir approached Aadam Aziz (Saleem’s grandfather) for refuge, and proceeded to dwell in his basement cellar. Nadir’s refuge in Aadam’s cellar depicts the forgotten history of India’s Muslims against partition, and the inter-religious tensions which boiled over into fundamentalism following the assassination of Mian Abdullah. Historians of secularization might employ the figure of a space left empty by the loss of religious faith, a hollow ready to be filled with the new faith of nationalism, this void, and futility is symbolized by Aadam Aziz deciding to pray, and then never pray again, leaving a void wanting to be filled. He decides to replace his religious convictions with a humanist ideology of love, but his void remains deficient. This absence is passed down, and inherited by his children. And his children’s children. India’s topical and historical relevance must be emphasized as it is thoroughly embedded in the roots of the novel. Events both post and pre- colonization are effective tools to unearth profound revelations intended for the reader. India’s first encounter with colonization was with the Mongol Empire, a Turkic-Mongol origin that ruled most of northern India (Pakistan) from the early 16th to the mid-18th century. After that time it continued to exist as a considerably reduced and increasingly powerless entity until the mid-19th century. The imperial monarchy is deeply rooted in Indian culture, and history, with fairly successful rulers such as, Shah Jahān (reigned 1628–58). His insatiable passion for building and under his rule the Taj Mahal of Agra and the Jāmiʿ Masjid (Great Mosque) of Delhi, among other monuments, were erected. The Mongols truly highlighted the Islamic upbringing of the South-Asian continent. India’s next colonial encounter was with the British Empire. The rule of the British in India is possibly the most controversial and the most fiercely debated part of the history of the British Empire. Enthusiasts of British rule point to the economic developments, the legal and administrative system, and the fact that India became the centre of world politics. Critics of British rule generally point out that all of these benefits went to a tiny British ruling class and the bulk of the Indians gained little. Despite matter of opinion, the British made great contribution to India’s to India’s history, in political manners. At the beginning of the novel Aadam Aziz is told by Tai the boatman that his protuberant nose is: A nose to start a family on, my princeling. There'd be no mistaking whose brood they were. Mughal Emperors would lay their success on a nose like that one right there. There are dynasties waiting inside it . . . like snot. (8. Rushdie)
Tai the boatman is astonished by the length of Aadam’s nose (Saleem’s grandfather). He compares its span to one of the defining qualities of the Mongol Emperors, who have colonialised India for a large part of its history. To continue with allegory of the previous argument in which India is materialised through character actions, appearances, and speech, Aadam is also objectified as a metaphor or Cipher. Aadam, being the grandfather of Saleem, must now follow characteristics of India’s colonial precedence. As previously discussed Saleem is the archetype of India, as they share various similarities. Aadam too, is an archetype of India’s past, as he resembles a combination of the Mongolian. His physical appearance is a likeness to the Mongolian’s, as he shares the qualifying nasal bridge. William Methwold is a British imperialist and Nobel, who sells the Sinai’s his estate before vacating India. Methwold seduces a young street performer, and impregnates her. Their child is switched at birth with the Sinai’s child. That infant happens to be Saleem; hence Saleem’s biological father is William Methwold, yet he inherits the nose of Aadam. Therefore, we see both William Methwold’s British temperament, and Aadam Aziz’s Mongolian appearance trickle down to form Saleem’s convoluted Indian genealogy. Hind sight and historical perspective bestow firm unfair advantages, in so far as they facilitate certain events of the past to be seen in sharp focus in the light of the latter day developments, but sadly they also cause some distortions by blurring the need or impact of the events at the time of their actual happening. They improve your objectivity, but at the same time dull your sensitivity. The Indian state of emergency in 1975 was quite possibly the darkest moment in Indian record, as its history receded to a place where there was the authority to rule by decree, allowing elections to be suspended and civil liberties to be curbed. India’s idealistic democratic structure had been undermined and replaced by a dictatorial tyrant by the name of Indira Gandhi, who distorted her grandfather’s vision into a hallucination of power. Atrocities ranged from the detention of people by police without charge or notification of families, abuse and torture of detainees and political prisoners, forced sterilization, and the destruction of slums. Of course, the emergency being a significant period in India’s history must be refracted in terms of an analogy within Midnight’s Children. This novel has a reoccurring theme of simultaneous birth, even when it is not literal: ... While Parvati pushed in the ghetto. J. P. Narayan and Morarji Desai were also goading Indira Gandhi, while triplets yelled push push push the leaders of the Janata Morcha urged the police and Army to disobey the illegal orders of the disqualified Prime Minister, so in a sense they were forcing Mrs Gandhi to push, and as the night darkened towards the midnight hour, because nothing ever happens at any other time, triplets began to screech it's coming coming coming, and elsewhere the Prime Minister was giving birth to a child of her own. (499. Rushdie)
As Saleem recounts the events of his life, he quite clearly correlates the birth of his children, to the malevolent declaration of the state of emergency. The resemblance of a human to a nation has been perpetuated especially in terms of India’s “birth”. Stanley A. Wolpert is a UCLA professor who thoroughly studies the history, politics, and culture of the South-Asian sub continent. He has documented several instances where India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are referred to as human specimens. The first prime minister of India on its partition: "cutting off the head we will get rid of the headache" (347. Wolpert). Mahatma Gandhi on the segregation of India: "the vivisection of his motherland" (347. Wolpert). Lastly, Yahya Kahn, the Pakistani president on Eastern Pakistan (Bangladesh): "no power on earth" could separate East and West Pakistan, since they were "two limbs of the same body" (385. Wolpert). What Rushdie has done is taken Wolpert's metaphors plainly, to add a touch of comic relief and magical realism. Indira Gandhi’s establishment of the emergency is denoted as a metaphorical birth of a nation, as she directly undermining India as a country by pursuing her dictatorial obsessions. She is not nurturing the child referred to as India; she is forcible sculpting her hallucinations. The atrocities committed on the Indian people, are refracted onto Saleem. Saleem faces sterilization, detention, abuse, the destruction of his home, and the death of his wife Parvati.
Midnight’s Children truly follows the life of a nation. Saleem Sinai is the physical incarnation of the Indian sub-continent. India truly encounters events of morbid and melancholic nature, yet Salman Rushdie is talented enough to literalize these occurrences with the right amount of comic and magical realism as to preserve its historical relevance. If India where a person, it would apparently be someone whose paternity would be in dispute, and its ability to tell its story would be in question. These characteristics truly emphasize the comic relief of the novel without undermining the accurate representation of events. The major events which shaped India are reduced to the level of a single person, born on the same day, same minute, and same second. We see Muslims who supported a secular state, characterized by religious tolerance that has been rudely shoved "under the carpet," both William Methwold’s British temperament and Aadam Aziz’s Mongolian appearance trickle down to form Saleem’s convoluted Indian genealogy, and Saleem suffer during the deconstruction of India and the emergency. Yet, here lay India, one of the world’s most successful countries, and the largest democracy, truly a perpetuation of the statement “History bares testimony to the fact that great nations face grave crises”
Work Cited:
Rushdie, Salman. Midnight's Children:. New York: Knopf, 1981. Print.
Wolpert, Stanley A. A New History of India. New York: Oxford UP, 1977.