CHAPTER III DIASPORIC RECEPTIVITY IN SALMAN RUSHDIE S NOVELS 3.1 SALMAN RUSHDIE: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY: Salman Rushdie is a contemporary writer who

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1 CHAPTER III DIASPORIC RECEPTIVITY IN SALMAN RUSHDIE S NOVELS 3.1 SALMAN RUSHDIE: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY: Salman Rushdie is a contemporary writer who belongs to the group of Indo- English authors. Ahmed Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) on 19 th June He was born into the broad-minded Muslim family of Anis Ahmed Rushdie and Negin Rushdie. He studied at Cathedral and John Connon English Mission School at Bombay. At the age of fourteen he went to Rugby School in England. He read History at King s College, Cambridge and received his Master s degree in History in After graduating, he lived with his family who had moved to Pakistan in He worked as an actor and a free-lance advertising copywriter in England before taking up writing as a full-time career. In 1976 he married Clarissa Laurd. Zafer, their child was born in In 1985 he was separated from Clarissa and married Marianne Wiggins an American writer in In 1989 a fatwa was issued against Rushdie and his publishers for publishing The Satanic Verses. This book was publicly burned and was banned in several countries including India. During their forced exile their marriage broke up. He divorced her in In September 1998 the Iranian government announced that the state is not going to put into effect the fatwa but Ayatollah Hassan Sanei announced a reward for killing the author. However, when the threat was lifted, Rushdie ended his hiding. In 1997 he again married Elizabeth West and had a son Milan. Salman Rushdie moved from London to New York in He left his third wife because he fell in love with the actress Padma Lakshmi. They married in 2004, but in June 2007, Rushdie divorced. In 2007, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature. In his writing, Rushdie amalgamates the two worlds-british and Indian and is a cultural mediator. His writings moves from the Asian continent to the Middle East and London and New York. The experience of an expatriate and identity crisis are the major themes in his work. Rushdie is a novelist, essayist, travel writer and screen writer and is known for bold speeches. The writings of Rushdie interest the audience worldwide. He has established himself as a contemporary writer and as a migrant writer has argued for a rightful place for diasporic writers. Currently, Rushdie is Honorary Professor in the Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Fellow of the Royal Society of 84

2 Literature. He was made Distinguished Fellow in Literature at the University of East Anglia in He has received eight honorary doctorates. He was elected to the Board of American PEN in AN EPIGRAMMATIC INTRODUCTION TO RUSHDIE S WORKS: Grimus is Rushdie s first novel science fiction published in It is a political satire on western secularism. It is a multi-dimensional novel, both picaresque and philosophical. His second novel, Midnight s Children, published in 1981 won him the Booker Prize for Fiction. The novel narrates the main events in the history of India through the story of a pickle-factory worker named Saleem Sinai, one of the 1001 children born when India won independence in Rushdie s third novel, Shame (1983), is an allegory on the political situation in Pakistan. The Satanic Verses, his fourth novel was published in The writer was accused of sacrilege against Islam and demonstrations were made in India and Pakistan by Islamist groups. The orthodox Iranian leaders issued a fatwa against Rushdie on 14 th February a sentence of death and therefore he was forced to live under the protection of the British government. Salman Rushdie, however, 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. This was followed by a book of essays entitled Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism (1991). This collection of essays reveals Rushdie s imaginative and observational powers. It includes topics like politics of India and Pakistan, Palestinian identity and Common wealth literature. The Wizard of Oz which was published in 1992 is a linguistic work in which he combines art and jags. The collection of short stories East, West (1994) was followed by a novel, The Moor s Last Sigh (1995), where he narrates the history of the wealthy Zogoiby family told through Moraes Zogoiby, a young man from Bombay descended from Sultan Muhammad XI, the last Muslim ruler of Andalucía. The Ground Beneath Her Feet, published in 1999, changes the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in the context of modern popular music. Fury, published in 2001 is set in New York. He is also the author of a travel narrative, The Jaguar Smile (1987), an account of a visit to Nicaragua in His book Step Across This Line: Collected Non-fiction (2002), deals with various subjects ranging from popular culture and football to twentieth-century literature and politics. In Shalimar The Clown, published in 2005 Rushdie has used fable to tell the history of India 85

3 through his characters. In 2008, The Enchantress of Florence, a historical novel was published. The prizes and awards have been bestowed on Rushdie from time to time which makes him a great writer are listed in appendix 2. After having briefly overviewed Rushdie s major works, it would now be most appropriate to trace the history of Islam and the Muslim community to have a better understating about the subject of diaspora and the Muslim psyche in the novels of Salman Rushdie. 3.3 ISLAMIC HISTORY: A BRIEF GLANCE: Along with Judaism and Christianity, Islam is one of the three major religions of the world. It is a monotheistic religion that developed in the Middle East in the 7 th century C.E. Islam in Arabic language means surrender or submission. It follows the teachings of Prophet Muhammad. A follower of Islam is called a Muslim, which in Arabic means one who surrenders to God. The Quran is the sacred book of Islam. It includes the teachings of the Prophet that were revealed by Allah. Islam has several branches. The two divisions within the tradition are the Sunni and the Shia. One of the characteristics of Islam is the Five Pillars, the fundamental practices of Islam. These five practices include a ritual profession of faith, ritual prayer, the zakat (charity), fasting, and the hajj (a pilgrimage to Mecca). Muhammad laid the foundation for the ideal Islamic state. However, Muhammad s teachings had opposition, and in the year 622 AD., he had to leave Mecca and seek refuge in Yathrib city. After Muhammad's arrival, the name Yathrib was changed to Medina meaning the city. The date of Muhammad's immigration was later set as the beginning of the 12-month lunar Islamic calendar. Islam s involvement with politics dates back to the 7 th century in Arabia. Islam today has more than one billion followers, more than any religion except Christianity. As Harrison asserts, Islam is predominantly a religion of the third world. After Mohammed s life, when at one time or another, politically and economically as well as religiously, it controlled much of the world from Spain to Indonesia, it has seen its power, influence, and territory usurped by European imperialism. 1 (Harrison 123) After its rise in the 7 th century, Islam spread from its original home in Arabia into Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain to the West, and into Persia, India and by the end of the 10 th century, beyond the East. In the following centuries, Islam spread into Anatolia and the Balkans to the North, and sub-saharan Africa to the South. However, 86

4 under different political, economic and cultural conditions modern day Muslims find difficulty in identifying with standard Islamic practices. 3.4 MUSLIMS IN INDIA: Turks and Afghans brought Islam as a force in India. The Ghaznavids, a dynasty from eastern Afghanistan, began a series of attacks into north western India at the end of the 10 th century. In the year 1000 Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni in Afghanistan began to conduct raids in India. According to Nehru, Mahmud s raids are a big event in Indian history, though politically India as a whole was not greatly affected by them and the heart of India remained untouched. 2 (Nehru 252) After his death there was no invasion in India for the next 160 years. The Muslim conqueror Muhammad of Ghuri captured Ghazni and the Ghaznavite Empire came to an end in Then he invaded northern India and within 20 years he conquered entire North India, including the Bengal region. In 1206 Qutubuddin Aybak a slave of Ghuri was nominated as his viceroy in India and thus began the Slave dynasty. After Ghuri s assassination Aybak became the Sultan of Delhi. In the fourteenth century Timure (Tamerlane) and Genghis Khan a descendant of Mughal tribes came and established the Mughal Empire. For the following three centuries the Mughals remained the dominant power in northwest India. The sultanate was ruled by a succession of five dynasties before it was finally overthrown by the Mughal emperor Humayun in During the reign of the shortlived Khalji dynasty ( ), the warrior leader Alauddin financed his successful campaigns to south India with an established system of local revenue. The next dynasty, that of the Tughluqs, weakened when Muhammad Tughluq moved his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad to assert more permanent rule over his southern lands. In 1398 the Mughal conqueror Taimurlang invaded India. Taimurlang withdrew from India shortly after the sack of Delhi, leaving the leftovers of the empire to Mahmud, who as last of the Tughluqs ruled from 1399 to Mahmud was succeeded by the Sayyid dynasty ( ), under which the Delhi Sultanate shrank to virtually nothing. The Lodi dynasty ( ), of Afghan origin, later revived the rule of Delhi over much of North India. Many Indians got converted to Islam during this era. The Punjab was one of the regions where a great majority of the population was converted into Muslims. Muslims married Hindus (the founder of the Khalji dynasty was the offspring of one such marriage). The region that is now Bangladesh also became overwhelmingly Muslim during this period. This area had 87

5 been mainly Buddhist before the Muslims arrived. Even in South India, where the Hindu revival inspired by the works of Shankara and others had its greatest influence, a small minority of people became Muslim. Babar defeated Ibrahim Lodi at the Battle of Panipat. The Mughal Empire was founded in 1526 by Babar, a descendant of Taimurlang. Babar s kingdom stretched from beyond Afghanistan to the Bengal region along the Gangetic Plain. Babar was succeeded by his son Humayun who was defeated by Sher Shah Suri. Humayun, lost the kingdom to Bihār-based Sher Khan Sur (later Sher Shah) and fled to Persia (now Iran). However he took Delhi back and left the empire to his son Akbar. Akbar extended the Mughal Empire from Afghanistan to the Bay of Bengal and from the Himalayas to the Godavari river. He brought under his control the Hindu Rajput kings by defeating them in battle, extending religious tolerance, and offering alliances to strengthen by marriage and positions of power in his army and administration. Akbar s son Salim later known as Jahangir and his son Shah Jahan ruled peacefully. In 1686 and 1687 Aurangzeb conquered the Muslim kingdoms of Bijapur and Golkonda, which controlled the northern half of the Deccan Plateau. He enforced Islamic law. In 1697 he reimposed a jizaya tax on non-muslims, abolished during Akbar s rule. He was unsuccessful in suppressing the Hindu Maratha Alliance and the Mughal armies suffered numerous defeats. After the death of Aurangzeb the powers of the Mughals started declining, yet they ruled in a reduced prominence for another 150 years. The Turkish military leader Nadir Shah took the Iranian throne in 1736 and rapidly built an empire through conquest. In 1739 he dealt a blow to the Mughal Empire when he destroyed Delhi. His empire eventually stretched from Iraq to northern India, but it fell apart quickly after his assassination in It did not formally end until The political chaos of the period was marked by a rapid decline of centralized authority, and the formation of large independent states by the governors of the imperial provinces. Among the first of the large independent states to emerge was Hyderabad, established in In 1739 the Persian king Nadir Shah led an army into India and robbed Delhi. Nadir Shah withdrew from Delhi, but in 1756 the city was again captured by Ahmad Shah, emir of Afghanistan. At the time of independence from the British rule, Hindus and Muslims fought each other. The British army unable to deal with the threat of mounting violence, the new Viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, decided to advance the schedule of the transfer of 88

6 power, leaving just months for the parties to agree on a formula for independence. Finally in June 1947 the partition of the country took place along religious lines, with mainly Hindu areas allocated to India and largely Muslim areas to Pakistan. They agreed to a partition of the Muslim-majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal as well. After partition, Muslims who stayed in India were in minority and so they became weak. On occasions riots between Hindus and Muslims have occurred. Today Hindu nationalists believe that India is a native of Hindus while Muslim nationalists feel that Muslims as a separate community are a part of India. There are many examples of friendships and mutual respect. Muslim leaders have served as Presidents of India, and Muslims have held positions of great prominence in all fields, including the military. 3.5 DIASPORA IN RUSHDIE S NOVELS: In the twenty-first century the meaning to the term diaspora has undergone a metamorphosis. Modern diaspora puts more stress on national identity. It is connected with exile where a person is sandwiched between home and the country where he has settled. Diasporic communities are the marginalized people who are dissented in the name of culture. To live in a foreign country means identity crisis and alienation. One is away from culture and society. When a migrant goes to an alien country he has a feeling of loss because many times he is not accepted in new society and looks back to the past that is his homeland. However, they try to cope up with their native identity as well as the place of settlement. They represent themselves by using multicultural construction. Andrew Smith in his article Migrancy, Hybridity and Postcolonial Literacy states: that the concept of diaspora becomes more widely germane as displaced populations attempted to trace the rise of nationalism as the single most prominent form of modern communal organization gave the idea of the homeland as new state oriented connotations, associating it with political and popular selfdetermination. 3 (Smith 254) 89

7 He gives the example of French revolution where Greek people across Europe campaigned for an independent Greek homeland which meant a self-governing Greek country. The diasporic writers live in a foreign country and write about their native land. They also have nationalist feelings towards the country where they were born and wish to maintain the bond in an alien land through their writings. They are nostalgic about their homeland. Nostalgia is a feeling where they feel that they are geographically and mentally away from home and remember the memoirs of the native soil through their fiction. Rushdie s work has been regarded as a novel dominated by diasporic consciousness. He re-creates cultural crisis in his fiction. He views history, politics and identity of the Indian subcontinent through a migrant s consciousness which is reflected in his work. He believes that migration should go ahead with multiculturalism instead of being cut off from roots. According to Rushdie, the diasporic feeling continues when a person returns to his own country. Rushdie experiences that one feels alienated even in his homeland. He is not certain whether he will be accepted in his own country. Only in memories can one create an imaginary homeland. In fiction, villages and cities of his dream can be created, not in real life. Rushdie s worldview is connected to his own diasporic experience. He validates his position as a migrant writer by emphasizing the multiple heritages or multiple identities. The distance from the homeland makes him impartial. He represents India as well as the Indian subcontinent through his writings. In Shame, Rushdie wonders upon this matter: Outsider! Trespasser! You have no right to this subject!... We reject your authority. We know you, with your foreign language wrapped around you like a flag: speaking about us in your forked tongue, what can you tell but lies? 4 (Shame 28) The immigrants that speak the alien country s language are still outsiders. They are considered as intruders who have no right to speak in policy matters. Rushdie rightly notes that the search for national authenticity is an unreasonable one in the Indian context. Rushdie gives the picture of the migrants through his fiction. He explores the life of an immigrant and tries to solve the mystery of who am I? Rushdie mixes protagonist s alienation, Indian culture, the political scenario of Indian subcontinent, history and fantasy in his novels. He affirms, I suggest that the writer who is out-ofcountry and even out-of-language may experience this loss in an intensified form. 5 90

8 (IH 12) This feeling is of all migrants. He is certain that migrants will gain advantage from the trishanku (the metaphor used by Uma Parmeswaran) position. The migrant writers are insiders and outsiders in a society. They observe reality from both the sides. They re-create a new world from the old one. According to Rushdie to be an immigrant is a delightful experience. An immigrant can craft its own identity and prove himself/herself in a foreign country. Rushdie, in the words of Nayantara Sahgal is a Schizophrenic author. 6 (Sahgal 200) She further explains the word Schizophrenia as a state of mind and feeling that is firmly rooted in particular subsoil but above ground has a more fluid identity that doesn t fit comfortably into any single mould. 7 (Sahgal 200) Though Rushdie likes India (his birth place) he is comfortable in a foreign environment too. Sahgal feels that Rushdie has an identity which goes on changing from time to time. In fact he has multiple identities. The novel Midnight s Children is set in India. A part of the action takes place in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Midnight s Children: exploits a range of literary and cultural resources from allegory, satire and surrealism to Hindi cinema, Hindu mythology, science fiction, detective novel, American westerners political slogans and advertising jingles. 8 (Gopal 91) This novel is a fantasy, a satire on secularism and strangeness of Hindi cinema. The novel moves from Kashmir to Amritsar Massacre, and democratic India with Nehru as first prime minister, riots of 1950s, the Indo-China war of 1962, the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971 and the emergency imposed in 1975 by Indira Gandhi. Rushdie has also shown the condition of Muslims after independence in India through some Muslim characters. Narlikar opines, freeze a Muslim s assets, they say, and you make him run to Pakistan, leaving all his wealth behind him. 9 (MC 185) Muslims feel that the Indian government wants that all the Muslims should go to Pakistan. Even the Muslims who stayed in India wanted to go to Pakistan as Reverend Mother said, What is left in this India?... Go, leave it all, go to Pakistan. (MC189) They feel that it is better to go to Pakistan than to lead a disgusted life in India. After partition, the Muslims are in dilemma whether to stay in India or go to Pakistan because those who migrated from India are treated as second grade citizens in Pakistan. 91

9 Rushdie has given a clear picture of the Indo Pakistan war of 1971 in which Mukti Bahini party pledged to free Bengalis of East Pakistan. The Pakistani army tried to suppress them. As a result, millions of Bangladeshis migrated into India. The Indian army helped Mukti Bahini to attain freedom. Rushdie describes it as: Futility of statistics: during 1971, ten million refugees fled across the borders of East Pakistan-Bangladesh into India-but ten million (like all numbers larger than one thousand and one) refuses to be understood. Comparisons do not help: the biggest migration in the history of the human race -meaningless. (MC 498) In The Moor s Last Sigh India forms the backdrop to the novel which finally ends in Spain. Moor s migration is a forced migration. He tries to escape from Bombay due to explosions in which he feels that his father is involved. Moor goes to Spain with the intention of recovering his mother s stolen paintings from Vasco. In the end he is imprisoned in the tower of Vasco s fortress. Vasco Miranda dies of an overdose of drugs in a dramatic turn of events that lead the book to its climax and show the triumph of art. The end of the novel again goes back to the beginning of the novel. It finds the Moor nailing the pages of his tale to the trees around. Moor knows he will not survive because he starts loosing his strength. He is a thirty-six year old, trapped in a seventy-two year old physique. The last line contains his hope to awaken, renewed and joyful, into a better time. 10 (MLS 434; original emphasis) He is waiting for death with a positive note. Moor s forefather is an immigrant in India. Moor imagines India as a free country where people of all castes and creeds live together without any fear and hatred and are welcomed open mindedly. Earlier Moor s grandfather had imagined a utopia:...dawning of a new world... a free country... above religion because secular, above class because socialist, above caste because enlightened, above hatred because loving, above vengeance because forgiving, above tribe because unifying, above language because many-tongued, above colour because multi- 92

10 coloured, above poverty because victorious over it, above ignorance because literate, above stupidity because brilliant, freedom... the freedom express, soon soon we will stand upon that platform and cheer the coming of the train... (MLS 51; original emphasis) However, his hopes have not been fulfilled. Moor leaves India behind which has an unpromising future. Commenting upon the diasporic nature of the novel Minoli Salgado remarks, The novel appears to replicate the author s predicament by foregrounding a sense of banishment and impending death, opening and closing Moor s narrative with his premature death in exile. 11 (Salgado 154) Moor feels that he is rootless having no identity. Moor does not consider India as his home and returns to his ancestral home-spain. At the end he feels that he even cannot come back to India and dies in Spain. Thus, Rushdie speaks of exile in his works. He feels diaspora is like rebirth. Indian culture is a mixture of cultures. The migrants are always in minority, so they feel distinct and insecure. 3.6 QUEST FOR IDENTITY: Diasporic writers think that the world is suffering from identity crisis. Rushdie is one of them. In the first paragraph of the essay Imaginary Homelands, Rushdie looks at the photograph of the house in which he was born and writes, it reminds me that it s my present that is foreign, and that the past is home, albeit a lost home in a lost city in the mists of lost time. (IH 9) When he revisited Bombay he felt that he had lost it. In Imaginary Homelands Rushdie reaffirms: Our identity is at once plural and partial. Sometimes we feel that we straddle two cultures; at other time, that we fall between two stools. But however, ambiguous and shifting this ground may be it is not an infertile territory for a writer to occupy. If literature is in part the business of finding new angles at which to enter 93

11 reality, then once again our distance, our long geographical perspective, may provide us with such angles. (IH 15) Diaspora constitutes multiple identities that are singular, plural and one-sided. The writer makes it fruitful in his fiction. In both his works Midnight s Children and The Moor s Last Sigh, Rushdie is searching for his identity through the characters - Saleem and Moor. Salman Rushdie describes his identity as an Indian writer in England as being made up of bits and fragments from here and there. 12 (Marzorati 24) He wants to establish himself as a British writer because an Indian writer living in the British society has to face identity problem. He has in fact accepted the ideas of the western world. He faces the dilemma between homeland and the foreign country as he tries to preserve his Indian culture. In an individual s quest of identity, hybridity plays an importance role in Rushdie s fiction. Andrew Teverson in his Book Salman Rushdie: Contemporary World Writers writes: Rushdie s novels describe the intensified hybridization of an already Indian national culture after the colonization of India by the British, and the further hybridization of British culture both in India during the colonial period and in Britain as a result of post-colonial migrations. 13 (Teverson 128) In fact, Rushdie has blurred existing boundaries. His novels are a symbol of hybridity and heterogeneousness. The identity of the protagonists is multicultural and therefore Rushdie has depicted cross multiple cultures as his writings include the geographic world. Modern form of lifestyle is related to hybridity. The mixed tradition has replaced the desire for integrity. In Midnight s Children Saleem has hybrid identity. Originally he is an illegal child of William Methwold a British and a Vanita Hindu. When he was born he was swapped by a nurse named Mary Pereira and brought up in a Muslim family. In Midnight s Children Saleem s quest of identity is related to the country because Saleem is born on the same day when India got independence. As Saleem points out, to understand just one life, you have to swallow the world. (MC 145) Saleem connects his life with the history of modern India. He feels that his birth at the 94

12 midnight hour of India s independence has some importance. He has given many historical events and dates to show that he is at the centre of India s history. He is conscious of the fact that historical coincidences have littered, and perhaps befouled, my family s existence in the world. (MC 28) Throughout the novel Saleem feels a hole in his body. He questions uniformity of history by questioning the wholeness of his self, because a human being, inside himself, is anything but a whole, anything but homogeneous; all kinds of everywhichthing are jumbled up inside him, and he is one person one minute and another the next. (MC 328) Saleem is conscious and has accepted his identities as a character. He believes and accepts cultures and traditions of India. Through Saleem s multiple identities Rushdie has shown India s long awaited unity. According to R. S. Pathak, The motif of fragmentation is present through out the novel. However, in no case it is prominent as it is in the case of Saleem. He is fully aware of his problems and plights, misfortunes and discordances, so typical of rootless person. 14 (Pathak 163) India is divided into different provinces as Saleem s mental state. He feels rootless even though he is born in India. He knows the country s problems and even though he has telepathic power, he is not able to use it properly. Gradually, Saleem feels alienated and disintegrated, though he wants to keep alive his ties with history. In this novel Rushdie relates the identity of Saleem with the history of India. All the time his identity is confused. Rushdie s heroes suffer from identity crisis. As Saleem writes, Who am I? who were we? We were are shall be the gods you never had. But also something else; and to explain that, I must tell the difficult part at last. (MC 612) They are uncertain about their parenthood. They do not know who they are. Most of Rushdie s protagonists are migrants who have to construct their personal identity in relation to the social identity around them. Therefore his, characters frequently face either loss of identity or a confusion of identity. In Midnight s Children the mythological, cultural and spiritual importance of Saleem s name, shows cross cultural references of mythology, symbolism and a union of Eastern and Western influences. Etymologically, Saleem means simple and 95

13 straightforward. Saleem s name in early South Arabian kingdoms indicates-the moon, the ancient God of Hadramaut which was the people s chief deity in a male form. It is symbolized by the bull. In Hinduism, the bull symbolizes the vehicle of Shiva. Its initial letter also refers to the snake - the symbol of sin and destruction in Christianity. So his name suggests a fusion of different social, cultural and spiritual traditions. Saleem recognizes these different identities as parts of his primary I. He is aware of his existence which allows him to join together these different selves into his large identity framework. In Saleem s I exist multiple identities: Our names contain our fates; living as we do in a place where names have not acquired the meaninglessness of the West, we are victims of our titles. Sinai contains Ibn Sina, master magician, Sufi adept; and also Sin the moon, the ancient god of Hadramaut...his powers of actionat-a-distance upon the tides of the world. But Sin is also the letter S, as sinuous as a snake; serpents lie coiled within the name. And there is also the accident of transliteration - Sinai, when in roman script...is also the name of the placeof-revelation...when Ibn Sina is forgotten and the moon has set; when snakes lie hidden and revelations end, it is the name of the desert - of barrenness, infertility...the name of the end. (MC 423) Saleem feels that his name also contains his fate. He has a peculiar appearance. His large moon-face was too large; too perfectly round, Something lacking in the region of the chin. dark stains spread down my western hairline, a dark patch coloured my eastern ear, temples like stunted horns even rampant cucumber of the nose (MC 169) show his physical identity. Physically also he is not good looking. Saleem Sinai attempts to write his autobiography. He regards this, the possible way of getting rid of the flaws in his body and in his identity as well. Midnight s Children documents the demented wanderings of a split self in quest of wholeness and an identity. 15 (Swain 147) There are many other identity issues throughout the novel. Right from childhood Saleem is conscious of his identity. 96

14 As midnight s child he is mysteriously handcuffed to history, my destinies indissolubly chained to those to my country. (MC 3) The fate of Saleem is related to India and other midnight children. As the protagonist Saleem informs us: Newspapers celebrated me; politicians ratified my position. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote: Dear Baby Saleem, my belated congratulations on the happy accident of your moment of birth! You are the newest bearer of that accident face of India which is also eternally young. We shall be watching over your life with the closest attention; it will be in a sense, the mirror of our own. (MC 167) The novel opens with Saleem confessing the exact time of his birth. He feels obliged to utter the fact that he was born at the exact time of the independence of India: I was born in the city of Bombay once upon a time. No, that won t do, there s no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar s Nursing Home on August 15th, And the time? The time matters, too. Well then: at night. No, it s important to be more On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Oh, spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of India s arrival at independence, I tumbled forth into the world. (MC 3) As a result of Saleem s particular position as a midnight s child born at the time India gained her independence from the colonial rule, his life story goes hand in hand with that of the nation. Saleem blends his life with the political life of his country. Saleem and history are entangled. In the words of Saleem: Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I ve gone which would not 97

15 have happened if I had come... to understand me, you ll have to swallow a world. (MC 535) Saleem repeatedly wants to show that his identity is a mixture of different identities. He shares his birthday with that of his country so he thinks destiny has chosen him to look after his homeland. It is his right as well as his duty to preserve history. Moreover he has been blessed with supernatural power. In fact, he is conscious of his larger identity quite early in his life. Saleem is complete through the amalgamation of his identities. He symbolizes cultural traditions of Indian society. Saleem is born precisely at the time of the country s partition. He inherits religious and political differences of the time which are shown through his different identities. Saleem through telepathic power represents each identity which assists him in understanding the current problems of the nation. Saleem s telepathic abilities to hear the voices of India s midnight children born at the same night or at nearly the same time, symbolize Saleem s multiple identities. Like Saleem s name it also represents a desired reunion of India s social, political and religious differences: Telepathy, then: the inner monologues of all the so-called teeming millions, of masses and classes alike, jostled for space within my head...only later, when I began to probe, could I hear the unconscious beacons of the children of midnight, signaling nothing more than their existence, transmitting simply: I. From far to the North, I. And the south East West: I. I. And I...and the thoughts I jumped inside were mine... (MC ) Saleem s character is defined by the 1001 identities of midnight children, each reflecting a different cultural, socio-political and linguistic background. He is Shiva, Parvati-the-Witch, a Gujrati, a Brahmin, a poor citizen, a lackie, a rich citizen, a whitie, a Communist. He combines different identities of the midnight children into his very own like India which is an amalgamation of different states. When Saleem forms the Midnight Children Conference (MCC) in order to bring together the midnight children, the children s identities reveal themselves, each with the prejudices and world-views (MC 353) of their parents. There were Maharashtra loathing Gujaratis and fair-skinned northerners reviling Dravidian 98

16 blackies ; there were religious rivalaries; and class entered our councils. (MC 353) This shows India s secular, heterogenous and pluralistic culture. As Saleem contains the identities of each child, he is the only one who has managed to reconcile the differences between each distinct identity. In doing so, he has become a symbol of Indian union. He has realized in the complexities of his identity the multiplicity of selves within his greater I. Saleem s many identities make him understand that the self has no boundaries except to accept it out of ignorance. Saleem s quest for purification illustrates a recreation of his primary Self. With new memories and new experiences Saleem can now throw away the past roots. His I calls to be restored to innocence and purity (MC 487) thus transforming him into, what his fellow soldiers call, the Buddha. (MC 487) His loss of memory leads to the creation of a new identity in Pakistan. The historical events of the individual destiny are realized as part of an imaginative device in fulfilling the theme of search for identity in Saleem s mind. His thoughts vary between loneliness and deep rootedness like a pendulum. In the emerging political scenario the narrator is related to world politics and the politicians. The motif of quest for identity of Saleem Sinai is well integrated into the politicocultural and other themes of India s national development. Though Saleem Sinai by birth is placed in India s national history, he tragically flows away from it. In his quest for true identity, Saleem Sinai comes out of fantasy to seek his roots in the Indian consciousness, through past memories. He recovers himself from the troubled mind and resolves his national identity between India and Pakistan. He feels that his identity is not safe in Pakistan where words and action are quite contrary to each other. He observes the Pakistani world as false and unreal. His quest for identity is not settled in Pakistan. Therefore, Saleem searches into the Indian society to obtain his identity. To maintain his quest from the levels of memory and fantasy, Saleem enters into a world of uncertainty. As he moves in the air-lanes of the subcontinent, (MC 532) he loses his own self and identity as an individual. Rushdie has focused on national identity in his fiction. His quest for roots and identity find parallels with the national history of the country. Saleem s quest for identity with the Indian psyche is unsettled in its meaning. Saleem wants to establish his identity with the entire Indian subcontinent. Rushdie s fictional world explores the world of eternity. Saleem Sinai is an explorer of a national destiny to which he does not belong to for reasons of history, and cannot change the historical destiny of the 99

17 nation. His national identity is rooted in him and he is a part of the history of a country where he has no identity. He cannot accept such a position. Out of this refusal of history, he wants to search for a meaning and fulfillment outside it, at least in dream and memory. Saleem feels lost as he tries to determine his real family. Saleem, after his first exile from his parents, tries to behave well with his aunt and uncle because he is afraid that he will be abandoned again. This fear bothers Saleem throughout his childhood and adolescence. He stops communicating with the Midnight Children for a period just to avoid Shiva, who he thinks will try to harm his relationship with his family if he finds out the truth. Saleem s psychic turmoil and split personality indicates the loss of a sense of existence and belonging. He has to assume many identities as he lacks the authenticity of parentage. His search for parental figures forces him to identify many people as his parents. He has four possible fathers - Ahmad Sinai, Nadir Khan, Wee Willie Winkie and William Methwold and three mothers - Vanita, Amina Sinai and Mary Pereira. He observes: I have had more mothers than most mothers have children; giving birth to parents has been one of my stranger talents. (MC 337) Fawzia Afzal Khan comments on Saleem s mixed parentage: Saleem, who is thus born of an unholy alliance between colonizers (Methwold) and colonized (Vanita) can only live out the most schizophrenic of existences, a man literally disfigured by the aural ravages of history. 16 (Khan 55) Even though he has many fathers and mothers he still feels a loss of identity in life. His life is meaningless. Actually as an illegitimate child he believes that he has no right to anything. Again, the cultural uncertainty in Midnight s Children cannot be ignored. Saleem, as a Muslim tries to connect himself to Islam but instead he combines both religions in his narrative. When Saleem first hears the voices of the other midnight children he relates it to the prophet Muhammad. The religious hybridization connects Saleem s identity to history. These mythologies motivate Saleem to express his own identity. These cultural and religious divisions are clearly observed in Saleem s 100

18 relationship with Shiva and Parvati-the-witch. These relationships illustrate the religious and cultural hybridity that is present in India. Saleem s hybrid inheritance is similar to that of India s in the form of being a native. There is a close resemblance between India s struggles with those of Saleem and the other midnight children. So Saleem s story has division and disputes, choas and disillusion, hybridly and multiplicity. Rushdie does not look at India as one unified whole. He observes India as a land of diversities and makes Saleem s story diversified by throwing a bit of everything in it. Saleem begins his inner journey and search for roots by taking remedy into the realm of fantasy: I began to dream repeatedly of Kashmir; although I had never walked in Shalimar Bagh, I did so at night; I floated to Shikaras and climbed Sankara Aacharya s hill as my grandmother had; I saw lotus roots and mountains like angry jaws. This, too, may be seen as an aspect of the detachment which came to afflict us all... a reminder of my family s separateness from both India and Pakistan. (MC 457) Rushdie is attached to India the place of his birth. He searches for integrity in a hostile environment. M. K. Naik and Shyamala A. Narayan aptly state: Midnight s Children thus illustrates the permanent plight of individual identity in the hostile modern world, which makes it impossible for anyone to remain an island but compels everyone to be part of a continent, with the result that the individual is inevitably handcuffed to history. 17 (Naik & Narayan 225) According to them Saleem is divided between colonial and independent India. Through Saleem s identity Rushdie has shown the condition of the minorities who want to be part of the mainland. In Midnight s Children, the hero cries Why, alone of all the more-than-five-hundred million, should I have to bear the burden of history? (MC 195) In fact, the problem of identity is related to the author himself who is of Indian Muslim origin; lives in Europe and writes about India. 101

19 In Midnight s Children a number of other characters also face the problems of identity. For e.g., Shiva, shares the same time of birth, is swapped with Saleem after their birth by a nurse Mary Pereira who wants to impress a Marxist rebel Joseph D Costa whom she is in love with. In this way Shiva, who is born to rich parents grows up in a poor family and lives a deprived life. As a child, Shiva is a leader of the children gang where many boys are older than him. He is ambitious, ruthless and makes an excellent career as a political leader. Though he belongs to a deprived family he turns into Prime Minister Indira Gandhi s favourite general. Saleem, on the other hand is confused as he could not use his magical gift correctly. He is a loser throughout his life as he loses his magical gift, his parents, love of his sister, his memory and finally his wife Parvati. He makes no attempt to control his life and takes the disasters as they come. Similarly, in The Moor s Last Sigh Rushdie shows the problem of identity in the modern world. Moor says I wanted to be Clark Kent, not any kind of Superman (MLS 120), but I find that I m a Jew. (MLS 236) Rushdie again describes India in The Moor s Last Sigh. The novel examines the consequences of rootlessness and identity. The Moor s Last Sigh is a fusion of the Indian diaspora, cultural plurality and language hybridity. The narrator tells his story a Moor s tale, complete with sound and fury. (MLS 4) The protagonist Moraes also known as Moor is neither a catholic nor a Jew but Jewholic-anonymous, a cathjew nut, a strew-pot, a mongrel cur Yes sir a real Bombay mix. (MLS 104) His father, Abraham Zogoiby is one of the few remaining members of the ancient Cochin Jewish community of India. His mother Aurora da Gama comes from a catholic spice trading family based in Cochin and claims descent from Vasco da Gama-the Portuguese navigator who brought European trade and colonialism to India s Malabar Coast in He is half Christian and half Jew. Thus, Moor has a hybrid lineage. He represents a fusion of catholic Jewish and Moorish cultural strains. Rushdie reassembles the story of Moraes Zoigoiby from history starting from Malabar Coast and ending at Malabar hill. From Bombay to Benengeli Moor declares: Mine is the story of the fall from grace to a highborn cross-breed Moraes Zogoiby, called Moor, for most of my life only male heir to the spice-trade- n -big-business crores of the da Gama-Zogoiby dynasty of Cochin, and of my 102

20 banishment from what I had every right to think of as my natural life by mother Aurora, née da Gama, most illustrious of our modern artists,. (MLS 5) The Jewish Moor is a mixture of many cultures right from his birth. His forefathers migrated from Spain to India so he is of hybrid breed. Moor wants his story to be known before his likely arrest. The story records four generations of the Da Gama Zogoiby family. It takes into account their origins in Cochin on the Malabar Coast, follows their lives on Malabar Hill, and plays out its final in Spain. Rushdie chooses to tell the story from the viewpoint of two minorities in India the Jews and Christians. Francisco Da Gama and Epifania Menezes get married in 1900 and build an empire on the spice trade. Their marriage leads to the birth of two sons, Camoens and Aires. Aires and his wife Carmen bear no children while Camoens and Isabella s marriage leads to the birth of a daughter, Aurora. The only heir to the family, Aurora Da Gama marries Abraham Zogoiby, the Jew. Four children Christina, Inamorata, Philomena and Moor are born to Aurora and Abraham. Aurora is regarded as an incarnation of the smarty boots metropolis. (MLS 139) In her home at Bombay all kinds of artists are open-mindedly welcomed. Her paintings offer pluralism in theme. Worlds flow away into each other and run over on her canvass. Call it Palimpstine was her word regarding this merger of universe, dimension, country and dream. (MLS 226) Her art was of land-sea-scape in which the land could be fluid and the sea stone-dry was her metaphor... of the present, and the future, that she hoped would evolve. (MLS 227) Over her artistic career she draws the course of her family and the nation, depicting the decline of India s idealistic pluralism and ending with a tragic palimpsest. The palimpsest is a valuable narrative to deal with the issue of national identity. Palimpsest is a Greek word which means to scrape. It was Jawaharlal Nehru who viewed India as a palimpsest on which many cultures had adorned their contributions. It characterizes the city of Bombay, the characters and the paintings in the novel. This novel shows India in terms of multiple cultural identities. Rushdie puts together two multicultural countries-spain and India on the canvas of the story. The novel presents entanglements among Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish cultures where multiculturalism may gain freedom. In this novel the influence of Jewish culture is also seen. In fact, the impact of Jewishness in The Moor s Last Sigh may 103

21 have more to do with literary influences. Rushdie laments for the near disappearance of the Jewish community from Cochin as he writes, They have almost all gone now, the Jews of Cochin. Less than fifty of them remaining, and the young departed to Israel. It is the last generation; arrangements have been made for the synagogue to be taken over by the government of the state of Kerala, which will run it as a museum. (MLS 119) The Moor s community of origin confirms the novelist s interest in minority-jewish community. This is because Salman Rushdie himself felt isolated and discriminated due to the issue of fatwa that led to this identification. The Moor s Last Sigh was published directly after The Satanic Verses when the fatwa was still in effect, and Rushdie s interest in Jewishness needs to be understood in that context. Jewishness is both central and marginal in this text but little is said in The Moor s Last Sigh about Moors connection with Judaism. In The Moor s Last Sigh, the Jewish Moor is the result a consequence of both Indian and Spanish multiculturalism. The religious identity of the Moor requires some critical attention. Rushdie is interested in hybrid identities and has represented India through his minority characters. Rushdie likes to celebrate the concept of hybridity. We all are, black and brown and white, leaking into one another, as a character of mine once said, like flavours when you cook. (IH 394) When all flavours are cooked it smells different in the same way when all colours are mixed it becomes hybrid. We all are mixed in colours and culture. National identity is expressed in The Moor s Last Sigh as in Midnight s Children. Midnight s Children ends with the declaration of emergency in 1975 in India where as The Moor s Last Sigh starts with the crises of the 1980s and 1990s. Moor, though born in India rejects Indian national identity and establishes his ethnic identity as a Jew and leaves for Spain as he avers: I found myself looking forward to Spain -- to Elsewhere. I was going to the place whence we had been cast out, centuries ago. Might it not turn out to be my lost home, my resting-place, my promised land? Might it not be my Jerusalem? (MLS 376) However, Moor knows that his community had been thrown out from that place but he still considers it as his home and goes there. When Moor reaches Spain, he thinks: 104

22 I am a Jew from Spain, like the philosopher Maimonides, I told myself, to see if the words rang true. They sounded hollow. I was nobody from nowhere, like no-one, belonging to nothing. That sounded better. I had reached an anti-jerusalem: not a home, but an away. A place that did not bind but dissolved. (MLS 388 original emphasis) Moor Zogoiby is compelled to accept his identity as nobody. He goes to Spain which is again a multicultural country but does not find it as his real home since Jews are in minority. Thus, Moor is forced into the position of a migrant. He escapes from Bombay, his birthplace. In Spain too he lives through the fear of experiencing homelessness. He is not able to connect his feeling of belongingness. He assumed he would feel at home but finds himself: in a most un-spanish thoroughfare... in the midst of a crowd that pushed past me in both the directions...i heard people speaking English, American, French, German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and what might have been either Dutch or Afrikaans. But these were not visitors... and behaved as people do on their own territory. This denatured part of Benengeli had become theirs. There was not a single Spaniard to be seen. (MLS 390) Moor thinks that these expatriates have come in search of identity and he is one of them. He is caught between the desire for home and the reality of homelessness. Notice that, although the street is crowded, the eyes of those crowding it are empty. (MLS 390) He feels in the crowd that all are searching for their lost identities. Moor when imprisoned in Vasco s fortress in Spain looks back and remembers his life in Bombay. The Moor s entire family story depicts the twentiethcentury Indian nation, which is narrated from an away location. The notion of the family s secret identity (MLS 152) is rooted in all the four Zogoiby children through the pictures of Vasco Miranda. All sorts of well-known 105