Safia Sahli Rejeb
University of Jendouba, Tunisia
Abstract
This paper explores the ways in which Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s
Children (1980) re-visits the political history of post independence from the
British Empire in 1947 including significant moments such as the Partition of
Pakistan India and Indira Ghandi’s state of Emergency. What is significant in the literary text is
Rushdie’s ability to fictionalise history, fantasize his depiction of
historical reality and combine history with politics through the portrayal of
the individual, Saleem Sinai the narrator, in relation to the larger historical
context that fashions the Indian society. Midnight’s Children creates a history
of India that is extremely heterogeneous and diverse, replete with stories,
images and ideas- a multifarious hybrid history. By re-visiting the past of India, and
re-writing one’s own history, one which allows for the infinite variety of
experiences, cultures and perspectives that make up our world, Rushdie’s novel
clears up a place in the historical record for those the suppressed and the
silent voices of history.
Keywords: History, Rewriting the past, Hybridity, India.
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