Post Colonialism in "Midnight's Children" Paper No.- 11
Name :- Gohil Devangiba A.
Roll No. :- 14
M.A Sem. :- 3
Paper No. : - 11 ( The Postcolonial Literature )
Topic :- Post Colonialism in "Midnight's Children"
Email id :- devangibagohil786@gmail.com
Submitted to Department of English Maharaja Krisnakumarsinhji
Bhavnagar University
Post
Colonialism in "Midnight's Children"
While there are many complex aspects
to Midnight's Children, it is clear that Rushdie offers a Postcolonial
narrative. Rushdie appropriates many elements of Post colonialism in his
work. The first is the lack of a reliable narrator. Building off
the idea of a lack of totality that is a part of Post colonialism, Saleem is
far from a totalizing narrator. His dates are wrong. Some of his
facts are not accurate. He is a participant in his own narrative, leading
to issues of bias. These are all deliberate, as Rushdie seeks to make a
statement that there can be no definitive notion of history. Any such
construction is going to silence voice and that the best we can do is collect
as many narratives as possible. This is a Post colonialism response to
the condition of imposition that sought to present itself as "the
truth."
Rushdie’s
Midnight’s Children, published in 1980, was perhaps the seminal text in
conceiving opinions as to interplay of post-modern and post-colonial theory.
The title of the novel refers to the birth of Saleem Sinai, the novel’s
principal narrator, who is born at midnight August 15th 1947, the precise date
of Indian independence. From this remarkable coincidence we are immediately
drawn to the conclusion that the novel’s concerns are of the new India, and how
someone born into this new state of the ‘Midnight’s child’, if you will,
interacts with this post-colonial state. To characterise the novel as one
merely concerned with post-colonial India, and its various machinations, is
however a reductive practice. While the novel does at various times deal with what
it is to be Indian, both pre and post 1947, it is a much more layered and
interesting piece of work. Midnight’s Children’s popularity is such that it was
to be voted 25th in a poll conducted by the Guardian, listing the 100 best
books of the last century, and was also to receive the Booker Prize in 1981 and
the coveted ‘Booker of Bookers’ in 1993.
Another element of Post
colonialism in Midnight's Children is how it is told from the indigenous
point of view. The presence of the British is felt, but the story,
itself, is one of Partition and division. Rushdie's use of All India
Radio, Bollywood songs, as well appropriating Muslim and Hindu notions of
reality help to enhance the Postcolonial understanding of the work. Being
able to relay the basis of Partition as well as the Emergency from an
indigenous point of view is also reflective of the Postcolonial elements
of Midnight's Children. From a theoretical point of
view, Rushdie wishes to deposit another vision of the narrative into the
discourse, one that hopes to achieve voice and enhance dialogue. This
becomes an element of the Post colonialism in the novel.
Why Midnight’s
Children is much more than of interest to the reader interested in post-colonialism,
is possibly due to its strong elements of magic realism, a literary
device. That goes hand in hand with post modernism. Perhaps the most
notable exponent of magic realism in literature is the Colombian author Gabriel
Garcia Marquez, who's One Hundred Years of Solitude written in 1967, came to be
seen as the standard bearer for the genre.
Many
postcolonial writers have resorted to magic realism as a way of promoting
national identity since it embodies practical reality of bygone and
contemporary events while simultaneously creating desires to upturn the flow of
occurrences. Realism renders nations’ appearances astoundingly the same,
whereas the unrealistic features of magic realism can render them unique by
manifesting yearnings in distinctive ways. With magic realism, postcolonial
authors get to challenge what otherwise appears like realistic narrative by
experimenting with a non-mainstream literary technique—fantasy—purposed at
presenting an alternative reality in longing subversion of western (read:
colonial) ways of constructing reality. To paraphrase Linda Hutch eon in
“Circling the Downspout of Empire,” the postmodern technique of magic realism
is linked to post colonialism in that they both deal with the similar oppressive
force of colonial history in relation to the past.
One
such postcolonial writer is Salman Rushdie, who used magic realism in
Midnight’s Children extensively. His fusion of fantasy and reality looks
typically Indian because the characters strewn in present social and political
disorder likewise own the power of epic heroes. As a novelist from a country
with a colonial legacy, Rushdie is also concerned and involved with the concept
of nation in his magic realist writing, which was motivated by (1) the
necessity to cast away what Coleridge called the film of recent past’
familiarity through the use of tabulation and (2) the dilemma of presenting
impossible events.
The desire to reclaim the India of his past was the driving force
behind Rushdie's decision to write Midnight's
Children – the novel was born when Rushdie realized how much he wanted to restore
his past identity to himself. Midnight’s Children was his first literary
attempt to recapture India. The novel explores the ways in which history is
given meaning through the retelling of individual experience. History is seen
subjectively through the eyes of the protagonist Saleem Sinai, therefore the
retelling of history is fragmented and, at times, erroneous. Rushdie is
relating Saleem's generation of „midnight's
children‟ to the generation of Indians with whom he
was born and raised. As a product of postcolonial India, Saleem pieces together
the multifarious fragments of his identity, just as India begins anew in
rebuilding her identity in the wake of colonialism. Saleem's
story represents the plural identities of India and the fragmented search for
self through memory.
Magic
realism as inherent part of the novel, from the grandfather’s tears of diamond
and ruby nosebleed through Ahmed’s vanishing skin to Narlikar’s luminous ashes,
shows the significance with which the ordinary context gets blurred by
miraculous events. First, it permits the plausibility in which characters like
Saleem portray epic roles in Indian history. Second, it metaphorizes the
cultural amalgam in everyday Indian society. Third, the fantastic events in
Indian history actually happened, notwithstanding if Saleem himself admits that
these occurrences are too marvelous to be believed. Necessarily, the fantasy
becomes a tool with which to relate and remark on Indian history, politics and
culture. Finally, magic realism helps define the identity of the Indian people
with its offering of an alternative history: a counter-memory.
The magic realism in Midnight’s Children stresses the sustained struggle to come at peace with identity within the postcolonial scheme. Not only are the midnight’s children magical beings, but also are they the children of the times—“the last throw of everything…the true hope of freedom…”—in acknowledgment of their midnight nativity. While Saleem’s generation did not succeed in realizing the possibilities built within the dynamics of independence, a possibility is present in every generation of midnight children to construct a complete identity despite the increasing difficulty of formulating so in the contemporary context. In the ambiguous final sentence of the novel which says, “it is the privilege of midnight’s children to be both master and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and be unable to live or die in peace,” a similar thread weaves not only the marvelous with the real, but also the colonial with the self-asserting postcolonial individual. The reflection of political and historical problem in magic realism renders it as a legitimate critique of colonialism and its attendant ideologies. In upholding the identity of the Other in the novel, the postcolonial challenges the imperialistic movement that champions centrality despite the simultaneous recognition of the power of the center in the privileging of the margin. Through this, a rising society’s necessity to renew its self-description and to erode constructed Orientalism by the West may be responded. The reinscription of the marginalized magic realism and the celebration of identity in post colonialism are means through which said centrality and, by extension, universality, may be questioned.
The magic realism in Midnight’s Children stresses the sustained struggle to come at peace with identity within the postcolonial scheme. Not only are the midnight’s children magical beings, but also are they the children of the times—“the last throw of everything…the true hope of freedom…”—in acknowledgment of their midnight nativity. While Saleem’s generation did not succeed in realizing the possibilities built within the dynamics of independence, a possibility is present in every generation of midnight children to construct a complete identity despite the increasing difficulty of formulating so in the contemporary context. In the ambiguous final sentence of the novel which says, “it is the privilege of midnight’s children to be both master and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and be unable to live or die in peace,” a similar thread weaves not only the marvelous with the real, but also the colonial with the self-asserting postcolonial individual. The reflection of political and historical problem in magic realism renders it as a legitimate critique of colonialism and its attendant ideologies. In upholding the identity of the Other in the novel, the postcolonial challenges the imperialistic movement that champions centrality despite the simultaneous recognition of the power of the center in the privileging of the margin. Through this, a rising society’s necessity to renew its self-description and to erode constructed Orientalism by the West may be responded. The reinscription of the marginalized magic realism and the celebration of identity in post colonialism are means through which said centrality and, by extension, universality, may be questioned.
Midnight's Children is
a typical example of a postcolonial novel that integrates the elements of magic
realism into it. The author's intentional use of magic realism helps in
bringing out the surreal and unreal dimensions of the Indian subcontinent and
thereby making it a postcolonial work. By synchronizing the national history
and the personal history, Rushdie narrates India's colonial past
and postcolonial present. His narration of the nation is subjective and
therefore history in the text is fragmented and, at times, erroneous.
Rushdie
assumes magic realism as an effective tool to solve the problems of post
colonialism. So, by connecting and combining historical events, mythological
stories and fictional narratives, Rushdie tries to create and convey a true picture
of Indian post colonialism. While the colonizers categorized India and Indians
as a monolithic place and people, the novel illustrates India's
multiplicity and diversity, in an attempt to overturn the colonial image of
India. Midnight's Children is therefore an attempt to recapture India. All
these attempts would have been impossible without the inclusion of magic
realism.
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