6

From science fiction to history:

Grimus and Midnight's Children

intellect which contines itself to mere structuralism

Any
is bound to rest trapped
in its own webs. (Salman Rushdie,

Grimus, 1975, G, 91)

fiction novels. (Salman
Back then I was partial to science
Beneath Her Feet, 1999, GBE, 205)
Rushdie, The Ground
in several
from science fiction tantasy appear
Scenarios borrowed features a
novels. Haroun and the Sea of Stories
of Rushdie's
on an automaton bird, The Satanic
to a magical moon of
journey by making several
Verses alludes to the genre self-consciously
science fiction tele-
actors in a popular
its characters voice-over
fascination with
and traces its protagonist's
vision show, Fury
in the 1960s when he,
like Rushdie,
the form back to his youth
fiction novels
of ... the form's golden
was a devourer of 'science is at its stron-

age (F 169). The science fictional imagination a-

fiction, Grimus
in Rushdie's first published
gest, however, organised
a sci-fi writing competition
novel that originated in of elements
has a number
and that, accordingly,
by Gollancz, futuristic paperbacks,
of well-thumbed
tamiliar from the pages with what Jorge
of a preoccupation
elixirs immortality, and a desire
ncluding 'causalrelations
LUIs would call alternative
Borges dimensions.
and explore the existence of parallelend in itselt,
Opostulate not as an
Rushdie sees science fiction of philo-
cause the exploration
but as a springboard for
OWever, be described
SOphical and political concepts,
the novel may also
fiction'- in
torm of science fiction
a'speculative
LPectic are used as a means
ucn the alien qualities of 'new worlds'
 criticism concerning
and
certainties
112 Novels
settled out, the
points
and destabilisingParameswaran starNus in the
as Uma orbits
the
ofinvestigating
world. (Hence, which
an anagrammatised
our own -Thera, -
is only
in Grimus
world of the Nirveesu the Sun in the Milky
'alien
Klim galaxy moves around
Yawy which
of 'Earth, achieved parti-
version
of our Universe'. fiction
Way galaxy the term 'speculative of the semi-science
Appropriately, critical descriptions and
in Doris Lessing
cular currency Rushdie's contemporaries and 198os Grimus
works of the 197os
fictional novels of as
to whose works ot these authors,
Angela Carter, resemblance." In the have argued, the
bears a passing and Natalie Rosinsky aims.
both Gerardine Meaney fiction fulfil distinctive political
of speculative that the alien qualities
techniques suggests
for instance, as an exotic or
Geraldine Meaney, of sci-fi 'operate
possibilities to be
of the other-worldly the familiar (cognitive)
allows
element which to questioning?
unfamiliar made available
in a new light and so that the 'cogni-
presented
in a similar vein, argues
Natalie Rosinsky, from 'conventional reality
of the audience
tive estrangement' and Carter 'prepares
science fiction by Lessing
in speculative world-view
inherent in any dominant
biases
readers to question to 'patriarchal realities.
feminism's challenge fulils a
and so tacilitates method
works this speculative his state
In Rushdie's Rushdie in
function, assisting reality
comparable politicised with which
as a 'weapon
aim of employing 'unreality'
it may subsequently
be recon the the
can be smashed, so that easy
to detect In
whilst it is relatively scenarios
(IHL, 122). However,
speculative in Grim. rimus
and cultural intent of Rushdie's Shame,
political
Children and Shame,chdie Ku1shdie

later novels such as Midnight's is that it

it.
the reality ash
what smash
it is less immediately apparent

to and why it is that

he wishes to
to smasi
litical
a socio-pollter to
is seeking smash, with
and with gethe
nd reade the
the reade
Grimus retrospectively, of
Reading not encourag owing
itself doe
does
awareness that the text
e elE in the novel a toreshadowing
character
to
to see Eagle
adopt, it is possible that are Flapping isa
interrogations Flappinists,
historical and
and cultural
ush ie's later fictions.
The novel's protagonist
later )
later protagonists
of Rushdie's
for instance, similar to many
 From science fiction to history 113

migrant who leaves his place of origin, travels through the world
insearch of a new (but elusive) homeland, and, in the process,
becomes a hybridised (at least an even more hybridised) entity,
unsure of the ground beneath his feet. The cultural disorien-
tation experienced by Flapping Eagle, moreover, his inability
to fit into the existing socio-culturalorders, the difficulties he

experiences in finding an appropriate voice in which

to speak,

may also be seen to reflect the feelingsof cultural alienation that

Rushdie, as a young Indian living in London, may be presumed
to have felt (asubject treated more directly and more analyti-
The Satanic Verses). not only to
cally in Grimus, however, tails
it also
alert the possibility of such interpretations,
the reader to

seems to want to disguise them by burying them under an ever

more elaborate mantle of allegories, metaphors, allusions,puns
and mock-philosophical absurdisms. In this novel, unlike later

novels, we might say, Rushdie seems to use allegory

and fantasy,
not as a means of his
facilitating argument but as
socio-political
a means of camouflaging it.
The continuities and disparities between Rushdie's first
novel and his later fictions are starkly apparent in the distinc-
between the imaginary homeland of Calf Island that
tion
confer
Flapping Eagle discovers for himself in Grimus and the
ence of freaks and mutants that Saleem convenes telepathi-
inside his skull in Midnight's Children. Both places of
cally

elonging have they are highly diversified

similarities.
Firstly,

terms of the social types they contain and they represent an

naginative attempt to conceive of a utopian social structure
nat will accommodate such diversity. Secondly, both
imaginary
ctiVIties are troubled
by the question of meaning: Saleem
concerned to discover what the Midnight's Children are for,
and the
occupants of Calf Island
tion that attempt to exclude the realisa-
they have no
meaning from their consciousnesses by
cultivating
speciality obsessions.
Island and the Thirdly and finally, both Calf
of an Midnight's Children Conference are
products
imagination fed upon science
seen, fiction. Grimus, as we have
borrows rom a
flourishing sub-genre of 1960s and 1970s
reality-busting
parallel-dimension narratives, and
Midnight's
 114 Novels and criticism

Children, as a narrative about mutants with special

powers led by
a telepath who attempts to use them as a orce for
good, echoes
the plots of comic books such as The X-Men that
Saleem,and
indeed Rushdie, luxuriated in as teenagers. difference
A crucial

remains between the two imagined collectivities,

however, for
whilst, in the later novel, the device ot the
Midnight's Children
is the means by which Rushdie,
using what Robert Potter might
have called a 'microcosmic examines the dificulties
analogy
involved in finding a national formation that will
represent the
first
generation of independent Indians, in Grimus, no
specific
national history is
suggested. Though we are able to see in the
device of Calf Island an
allegory of nationhood retrospectively,
the novel itself never licenses this
interpretative leap, and so
remains a
non-specificmeditation on 'the human condition'.
Itis this
limitationof Grimus that
many reviewers and critics
have emphasised. Catherine
Cundy argues that though Grimus
is about
alienation, "The alienation is not as
yet politicised, the
transformation is still more of a
fantasticthan a social
nature'
Timothy Brennan, in a similar vein,
suggests that 'Grimus fails
even though it is carried
off with
because it lacks professional brilliance simply
habitus'10It doesn't know
where it is, Brennan
memorably asserts, but "tries on"
cultures like used
This
critique is a
potent one, and its
clothing *
by the accuracy can be measured
quantity of readerswho
who, at least, rate it express doubts about Grimus, or
poorly in
quent works.
Not all critics comparison to Rushdie's
are dismissive subsE
Ib
Johansen has of Grimus,
argued that howeve
dizzying heights of though Grimus does not
attain the
Midnight's Children and accomplishment that
The Satanic Rushdie attains in
nevertheless'worth Verses
(few novels do) it 15
ment'. Likewise,Uma studying forits own
sake asa formal
the novels Parameswaran has experi
Rushdie argued that,
completed in the whilst
post-colonial literature, his 198os have 'enriched
tion that first
there is novel
another Grimus gives an
yet enrich, and to literary
tradition indica
which, she that
writings (a Rushdie might
prediction that is
predicts,
will he
Brennan is
return in later
partially borne
certainly correct out
in his by Fury).
observation that one ot
 From science fiction to
history 115
the defining aesthetic characteristicsof
Grimus is its tendency to
draw, eclectically and
indiscriminately, upon numerous cultural
reference points trom numerous
periods. Grimus borrows
scenarios freely from classical Sufi
allegory, Renaissance epic
Italian
poetry, the modern European and
American Gothic
novel, the
nineteenth-century Russian naturalistic
novel, the
American Western, Norse
mythology and Amerindian folklore,
to cite the
major examples.14 As a partial
response to Brennan,
however, we might observe that the
intertextual allusiveness
of Grimus is
not entirely
gratuitous, but springs, with a fair
degree of logic, from the
plot of the novel, since it is one of the
novel's central conceits that the
shape of Flapping Eagle's quest,
and the alternative
dimension of Calf Island
all ot the
upon which almost
'generic pastiche' scenarios occur, have been
into existence imagined
(conceptualised') by one of the characters in the
fiction, the
megalomaniac and myth-obsessed Grimus. Grimus
has achieved this
impressive feat by using an otherworldly
piece
of technology named the Stone Rose that has been
the Gorfs of created by
Thera; a race of
conceptualist philosophers who
structure their reality by playing a
complex anagrammatical
language game called 'the Divine Game of Order'
Given (G, 64-5).
this plot it is
easy to see why
Flapping Eagle's life takes
on the lineaments of familiar
myths and why Calf Island is
imagined in popular generic terms.The
technology of the Gorfs
works by
rearranging that which is to create new of
orderings
8iven materials', so when Grimus
imagines Calf Island into
existence and
gives shape to Flapping Eagle's life (and thus
shape to the novel) he does so
by rearranging the imaginative
models that he already has to hand:
his favourite
namely,
and generic narrative myths
scenarios. Both Calf Island and
Flapping
Eagle's life, according to this
reading, may be seen as a specula-
tive embodiment of
the idea that when human
-
world either as or as
beings imagine
a
fictionalisers
so not megalomaniacs they do
by reference to objective reality but by reference to
the
structures of
comprehension that have been made available to
them by
pre-existing narratives.
t this is
reading correct,it becomes possible to seethe novel
 116 Novels and criticism

as a Covert analysis of the forms of popular

post-structurali
theory that were current in the 1970s. Like the Gorfs of
theorists of the late had Thera
French critical 1960s described
reality as
a textualconstruct forged out of pre-existing
languages or strue-
tures of thought. Like the "Gorts', moreover, these
theorists had
argued that when we engage ina creative linguisticactall
that we
are doing is
rearranging earlier acts ot creation and expression.
Roland Barthes, for instance, in his influential
1968
essay "The
Death of theAuthor' had
argued that life never does more than
imitatethe book'and that 'thewriter can
only imitatea gesture
is
that always anterior, never original'. These are
arguments
only a whisper away from the Gorfic assertion that reality is
constructed by
thought forms and can be transformed by the
anagrammatical rearrangement of these
thought forms.0
This self-conscious
allusion to French
theory suggests an
analytical
or speculative
On approach to post-structuralist thought.
the one hand, Grimus
is a
text
in which the fictional world is post-structuralist inspired
of self-consciously compiled
innumerable out
pre-texts and
the world intertexts; on the other hana,
created by the
character Grimus
novel by no means (whose actions the
the endorses) also becomes a
question: if means of posing
as it is, post-structuralist thought does describe
what is that
tor reality
reality like and
the human what are its
condition? The implicatio
nightmarish and answer, if it is
affirmative dystopian 'reality' embodied in tne
one, for Calf of Calf
nating world in Island is, Island, is not an
which the firstly, a
structures of ttocating and stag-
suffocating
populace remain stag
they 1ouness
consciouness that
arrived; that trapped inside
trapped insiae the
rooted in and, they broug
brought with them
any known secondly,it is a hen
that has been world that,
reality (in because it 1s not
destined to
conceptualised
dissolve
Grimus-speak peak it is a
it is
into without dimension
reference to andimei
Roughly
spond to the speaking
two
thesetwo nothingness at the the end objeis
alist ot
of the
the
thought,and principal characteristics of no
novel.
another that anxieties Calf
have that cor
Iland corre-
possible throughout his
to beset
preoccupied
career:
recycle the Rushdie post-structu
in one way
languages, anxiety
concepts, that,if it
is
only ever
O
images that
are
already 1n
 From science fiction to
history 117

existence, then
becomes impossible to imagine ways in which
it

(as Rushdie later phrases the question in The Satanic Verses)

newness can enterthe world; and the anxietythat, if our notions
of are constituted
reality solely out of discourse, then there is

discourse by which we can measure the

no reality 'outside of

validity (or otherwise) of the worlds we create.

Such anxieties, of course, are
partly aesthetic
-
questions
a
posed by young artist who is endeavouring to discover 'a suit-
ablevoice to speak in'
(G, 32). They are also political anxieties,
however, since they concern the nature of individual
agency, and
the capacity of individuals to
challenge the cultural and political
structureswithin which
they find themselves and by which they
are
partly, perhaps wholly, determined. That Rushdie is aware of
this
political dimension to his aesthetic
speculations is apparent
in the sub-strand of
Grimus that imitates the Russian natural-
novel. This sub-strand centres
istic
the
upon pre-revolutionary
Russian aristocratic the who are striving to
family Cherkassovs,
maintain the life of
privilege they knew before they came to the
island.Also on the island,however,
the Marxist revolutionary
is
P. S.
Moonshy, who, true to his political beliefs, is their avowed
enemy, and regularly appears outside their house full of Marxist
spleen and siogans ('Liberty is herself in chains... The trans-
8ressors shall face a terrible vengeance'; G,140-1). For the most
part of the novel it appearsas if
Moonshy's politicised hatred of
the Cherkassovs is genuine. However, once the
'system' within
which they all live and operate comes under threat because of
the danger posed to thewhole social
apparatus by Flapping Eagle,
it becomes
apparent that the enmity of Marxist revolutionary
tor
aristocratic elite is
merely one of the mechanisms by which
itself. Moonshy closes ranks with the
the system perpetuates
Cherkassovs against Flapping Eagle, and, after the death of the
servant employed to attend to the needs of the idiot son,becomes
minder and servant in his place. "Moonshy diftered from the
rest only inchoice of obsession', Flapping Eagle realises, 'He
was Opposition Man. That was what
gave him the strength to
question the shaky edifice on which rested the sanity of K. He
questioned, but he was a part of it' (G, 150).
 118 Novels and criticism

This sub-plot reflects in little

upon the central
narrative
concerning Flapping Eagle's quest. For much of his
journey Flap-
ping Eagle believes that he is acting according to his
own free
will. When he reaches Grimus's
home, however, it is revealed
to him that his entire adventure, from the
moment he left
home to his confrontation with
Grimus, has been plotted by
the
magician. Even his revolutionary desire to
destroy Grimus
and liberate the of Calf
people Island, Flapping Eagle discovers,
is part of Grimus's plan to
complete the mythic structureof his
life by making Flapping Eagle his 'death'.
Flapping Eagle's
actof
resistance is, thus, like Moonshy's, because it becomes nothing
more than a
confirmation of Grimus's absolutist
In both agendas.
respects these narratives as
of the operate conciseallegories
suspicions that Marxist critics have voiced
concerning the
political efficacy of
post-structuralist discourses.Aijaz Ahmad's
scornful
précis of Michel Foucault's
tions, conception of power rela-
according to which 'whatever claims
to be a
other than a fact is none
truth-effect produced by the ruse of
whatever claims to resist discourse,and
Power is already
Power, is constituted as
minutely realised in the fates of
Moonshy." Likewise,the logic of the Flapping Eagle and
novel seems to retlect the
charge levelled
against
by the Marxist postmodernism and
critic Fredric post-structuralism
Own Jameson, who,
identification of worrying that his
serves to
render postmodernism as a 'cultural
any criticism of it dominant
ot the central futile, comes to
the paradoxes of identity one
ways in which contemporary endeavours to
writes: power pervades a explor
system. [I]t is certain', ne
that there is a

a
loses' strange
logic-whichtends quasi-Sartrean
to irony a 'winner-
system, a surround any
the effort to
movementtotalising
of dynamic, as these describe
that the are
more contemporary detected in
total society.
powerful the vision What
system or of happens is
is the
obvious
logic theFoucaultof
some
comes to example the- the increasingly
feel.
Insofar as more prisons book
an the powerless the
constructing
to that theorist reader
wins,
very increasingly closed and therefore,
degreehe
loses, since
by
theterrifying machine
critical
capa
 From science fiction to
history 119
his work is
thereby paralysed, and the
impulses of nega-
tion and revolt, not to speak of those of
social transforma-
tion, are
increasingly perceived as vain and trivial in the
face of the model itself18

At this
early stage of Rushdie's career it is hard
to determine
whether this observation
of the
tance offered ineffectuality of the resis-
by Flapping Eagle and
dian
Moonshy to the Foucaul-
system that Grimus has
implemented is an effect of the
novel's
post-structuralistlogic or whether, like
study, it Jameson's own
constitutes a
critique of
tions for post-structuralism's implica-
political commitment.
Certainly, the
of the representation
futility of resistance as
practised by characters such as
Moonshy and Flapping Eagle seems to
of
endorse the verytorms
political that Rushdie later criticises in
quietism
Orwell's Ninteen George
a novel in which, in
Own words, 'the Eighty-four; Rushdie's
secret book of the dissidents
turns out to have
been written by the Thought Police'(THL, 97). The fact,
that the however,
futility of Moonshy's and Flapping
resist the Eagle's attempts to
structures that have determined their
actions occurs
cnly within the
dystopic worlds constructed by Grimus
the using
technologies of the Gorfs may also that Rushdie
suggest
Intends to invite readers
to be of such
We might, suspicious philosophies.
perhaps, conclude that Rushdie is
engaged in a
cautious balancing act in Grimus in which a distinctionis
drawn
between two different forms of
post-structuralistthought, one
of which may be regarded as politically enabling, the other of
which may not. This
balancing act is apparent in the distinction
drawn in the novel between the orthodox
'conceptualism' prac-
tised
by the Gorfs, and the misuses of it by the
renegade Gorf
Koax which results in the creation of a dimension that
hasinsuf
licient contact with In the orthodox version of
reality. Gorfic
conceptualism, the 'statement of the dota-I think
therefore it
is-is'intended to mean simply that nothing could exist without
the presence of a cognitive intellect to
perceive its existence' (G,
66). This interpretation of the statement is
relatively uncon-
tentious: it suggests that the
objective world can only ever be
mediated by a
perceiving subject and is, as a result, constructed
 120 Novels and criticism

that that subject brings to

by the perceptual knowledges ear.

is corrupted by the renegade Gorf

This statement, however,
quite different:"that anything
Koax and made to say something
could conceive must therefore exist
of which such an intellect
results in the more
This modification of the postulate
(G, 66).
that human perceptions create
radical position:
philosophically materials'outside
do not need to be 'given
the world; that there to be

of in order for those structures

of the structures perception Grimus implies
validated. The former argument, we engage
ontologically is self-evident:
in both its textuality
and its narrative,
the struc
material world using
with an independently existing we have avail-
of narrative that
structures
tures of thought and
of
a dangerous torm
represents
able to us. The latter argument actions from
a material
human
because it detaches for a respons!
self-delusion, of the need
so relieves human beings
reality,
and misuse of theGorts
It is this philosophical
to that reality.
bility of Rushdie's specula
that is the principal target ana
originalposition imagined,
the imperfectly
when he constructs
tive critique
Calf Island.
hence unstable, world of
in a complex exploration
is
Grimus, in this respect, engaged t
that were curc
vogues
of the philosophical and aesthetic to the point,
was written. More
the decade during which it being uestions
not the political que
it sets out to explore (if
to resolve)
Contrary to efore
by those philosophical vogues.
that are raised
we might there
of the more strident critiques of the novel,
its speculative metnou
argue, Grimus is a fiction that applies
it
an analysis of the intellectual climate from which spring
engageged
Even if we argue that Grimus is a speculatively
explo
fiction, however, it remains the case that the intellectual
are
they
tions conducted in this fiction remain abstract, because
ical
never explicitly connected coherent, identifiable, histo
to a
cted
moment. Brennan and Cundy, as we have seen, have obye
novel
tothenovel on this basis. The most vigorous critic of the
in this regard, however, is Rushdie himself, who, in later
yea
has spurned the first flowering of his talent as a work of artistie
and intellectual cowardice. "The thing that disliked about my
I

first novel' he told Rani Dharker in interview in Wwas

1983,
 From science fiction to history 121

that it's a complete tantasy. It's not placed

place, some
in a real

imaginary island[,] and after finishing it, after some distance had
been established from it, it seemed to me that it was not inter-
esting really'(SRI,52). TFJantasy', Rushdie adds,
extending this
expression ot personal dissatistactionwith his novel into a more
general retlection on the role of fantasy in fiction, 'is not inter
estingwhen you separate from actuality,it's only
it
interesting
as a mode of dealing with actuality' (SRI,52).
Given such sentiments it is perhaps unsurprising that we
find Rushdie's narrator, at the very outset of
second novel, his

Midnight's Children, unambiguously turning his back on fantas-

tical, unplaced, atemporal registers, in favour of a text that is

carefuly located in an identifiablegeographical place and rooted

in a moment in time so specificthat it can be pinpointed to the
second:

was born in the city of Bombay... once upon atime.No,

I

that won't do, there's no

getting away from the date:I was
born in Doctor Narlikar's Nursing Home on August 15th,

1947. 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. Clock-hands joined palms in

respectful greeting as I came. (MC,11)

The significanceof this second is, of course, paramount both

in the recent sub-continent with which
history of the Indian
Midnight's Children concerns itself and in the story of Saleem
trace a path
proposes to use to
Sinai's life, which the novel
at which
through this history. For India, it is the moment it

from for Saleem it is the

won independence Britain; moment of
a fact that ensures that he, the narrative that
his birth, he tels,
the novel that Rushdie writes, are all, unlike Grimus, 'hand-
and
cutted to
history' the very outset, then, this is
(MC,11). From
a novel that,
though it draws frequently on fantastical registers,
locality, its resistance
to the abstracted illusions of
ounces its

e
which
upon
a
time', and its difference
from Rushdie's
sold only a few hundred copies and which, mortityngiy
first novel,

tor such an ambitious writer, disappeared without trace.

 122 Novels and criticism

The narrativeof
Midnight's Children is told
Saleem reconstructs the retrospectively, as
events of his
of a biography for the
single auditor, Padma, his benefit
the pickle occasional lover and a
tactory to which he has worker in
come to end his
novel's thus
setting alternates between a days. The
which Saleem fictional
intervenes present, in
of writing, and a authorially to retlect
fictional upon the
past, in which process
unfolds Saleem's
against (orwithin) the family saga
This backdrop ot Indian
mock-epic saga, as national life.
both in the mock-epic epic sagas will be,
scope of the is
events it diverse,
events miracles fictionalises
places rumours') and in ('intertwined lives
tion it draws the torms of
upon (reportage, narra-
the 'fantastic fairy tale, satire,
heart' of the realism). At
narrative, however, is
Midnight's Children themselves the tale of
born at the hour of thosewho,like Saleem, the
were
Independence, and whose fates, like
indissolubly linked to those of his, are
their
these children, Saleem country (MC,192).Each of
reveals, has,
(or perhaps, by virtue of their fortuitous
given the course the novel
time of birth, a follows,
unfortuitous)
mysterious magical gift. Some are so beautihul
they cause blindness, some can
transform themselves înto
Wolves, some can wer
change sex at will. The two most or
the powertul
Midnight's Children, however, are those born at
the exac
moment of midnight: Saleem
himself, whose telepathic abilities
enable him to
provide a mental forum in which the group
meet (Saleem describes himself as a 'radio' receiver, these
oclShiva,
days he seems more like an Internet 'chat room );ana
Saleem's double, with whom he was swapped at birth, and
him
thus
aleem struggles to exdude from the group, aeny"
his rightful inheritance for a second time.
and an
abil

If Saleem's
magical abilities suggest empathy and mutual
to bring
people together through communication phys
phys nal
ofphenome heand
agreement,Shiva, his opposite, is possessed Hence ien

in rule by force.
strength and believes
ical
hica conflic take(al56
an extended philoso uld
aleem are engaged in Conference
shoule
form that the Midnight's Children lndependence
ofpost-Ine
the form
SIon
implicitly, a
debate concerning
different coniu
India) they come to radically
 From science fiction to history 123

up the familiar liberal position that the group should be 'some-

thing more like a, you know, sort of loose federation of equals,all
points of view given free expression (MC,215). Shiva, predict-
ably contrary, argues that 'gangsgotta have bosses', and that the

only rule
that should
apply
to -
the Midnight's Children as with
all collectivities - is militaristic and authoritarian: "Everybody
whatI say or I squeeze the shit outa them with my knees'
does

(MC,215). If the novel has any one argument to make, it is that

Saleem's hopes for the Midnight's Children Conference and for

India, expounded so optimistically in 1957, have been, by 1977,

comprehensively disappointed.
On this level, the message offered by Midnight's Children
isa pessimistic one. The Midnight's Children Conference, like
India, fails to find a form that will allow all its members to
co-exist harmoniously, and avoid civil strite. The pessimism is
offset, however, by the fact that the three most potent of the

Midnight's Children, Parvati the Witch, Saleem and Shiva, have

produced between thema son symbolically named Aadam (Shiva
being the biological parent, Saleem the adoptive).
At the startof
the novel another Aadam, Saleem's grandfather, had suffered
a from grace in
fall the idyllic garden state of Kashmir. The
mythic logic of the narrative suggests that this second Aadam
embodies the hope for future redemption and regeneration; of a
new and better start for the children of Independent India. 'We,
the children of
Independence', notes Saleem in the penultimate
episode:

Tushed wildly and too fast into our future; he [Aadam,

Emergency-born, be is already,more cautious, biding
will

when he acts, he will be impossible to resist.

nstime;but
he is stronger,harder,more resolute than 1. (MG
uready,
410)

Saleem
s
hnctionofthe firstgene:
realises,
neration
was to
ofMidnight's Children,
be destroved, but out of its destruction, the
P1or a better
future springs. Midnight's Childre1, in
this
Can be seen as an
attempt to provide a mythologisation of
EIndependence
of India not dissimilar to the
mythologisatiO
postwar
Europe provided by T. S. Eliot in The Waste Land;a
 124 Novels and criticism

a realisation of the barrenness

poem in which, broadly speaking,
gives way to the possibility
of hope for the present generation
Like Eliot's 'hooded man'
of The Waste
of future regeneration.
Indian Fisher King
be construed as a modern
Land, Saleem might
wound (his castration) that
-a figure who has received a sexual
of regenerating (MC, his lands 191).
has rendered him incapable it is clear

the Fisher King of The Waste Land, however,

Unlike will never manage
indeed Saleem's successors)
that Saleem (and that
a new out of the multitudinous fragments
to forge
of the nation.At the start
totality of
the and history
constitute his history
believe that he can assemble the contused
the novel Saleem may of him into a narrative
mass ofstories'jostlingand shoving'inside
the novel's conclusion, howeve
that has 'meaning (MC,11). By
cannot be assembled
become that the fragments
it has apparent will
like Lifafa Das,
and that Saleem,
into a meaningful whole,
(MC,75).
end up defeated by the 'hyperbolic formula much
Children is
In one sense, this means that Midnight's
will never become
than The Waste Land: Saleem
less hopetul up againt
the of the nation by shoring fragments
'saviour of futilnty
ruin to make some sense of 'the
immense panorama
sense
In another
and anarchy which contemporary history'19
is
him, represe
whilst a tragedy for
however, Saleem's failure, for
of the Eliotian nostalgia
for Kushdie, a successful overcoming
and order upon
totality, and the tyrant's need
to impose form
unsuccesstu
that which has no inherent order. Whilst Saleem is unsucter
and for the
in his attempt to provide a form both for his life
dren
lite
of post-Independence India, therefore, Midnight's Chia its
in
In all
itselfpresents the possibility of narrating the nation
tation
complexity, without the need to 'beautify'; to eliminatev
ety

f is
t
in the interestsof a
difference, perplexity totalising v15101
of
for this reason that Rushdie argues that, though 'the sto
Saleem does indeed not
lead him to despair', the novel itselt 1 *
a despairing one:

the story is told in a manner

designed to echo, as closely
as my allowed, the Indian
abilities selr
talent for non-stop
regeneration.This is why the narrative constantly throws
up new stories, why it 'teems'.The form -
multitudinous,
 From science fiction to
history 125
hinting at the intinite
possibilitiesot the
country - is the
optimistic counterweight to Saleem's personal
do not think that a book tragedy. I
written in such a
manner can
really be called a
despairing work. (IHL, 16)
In some
respects this refusal of a
the declarationof a war totalising aesthetic, and
on allies
totality, Rushdie with
the post-
modernists. Like
Jean-François Lyotard, he strives to
a form of
imagine
representation that 'denies itself the
solace of
torms, the consensus of a taste which good
would make it
share possible to
collectively the nostalgia for the
unattainable'.20 Rushdie
himself, however, has
repeatedly insisted that his
totalise' is not a refusal to
product of abstract
trom a speculation but springs
particular conception of the
composition of the Indian
sub-continent, and from a desire to
resist
of Indian 'singular'conceptions
national
identity.Rather than think of his
classical form as resistance to
something that derives
modernist exclusively trom a post
sensibility, in other words, Rushdie
believe that his would have us
choice of fictionalform
derives
his desire to principally from
negotiate a concept of nationhood
and national
1dentity that is diverse,
disseminatory and does not 'add up' to a
Single story of a
single people or a single tradition.

Rushdie's concern, in
Midnight's Children, to fictionalise an
experience of recent Indian
history suggests that his novel
might potentially be considered as a form of
historical fiction.
Certainly,Midnight's Children has elements in it that
as a identify it
historical text. It brings within its a
compass selectionof the
major events in modern Indian
history, including the Amritsar
massacre (1919), the 'Quit India' resolution
(1942), Indian Inde-
pendence and partition (1947), the Bombay language marches
1956), the Indo-Chinese war (1962), the death of Nehfu (1964),
the brief Prime of Lal Bahadur Shastri
Ministership (1964-65),
the Indo-Pakistani wars of
1965 and 1971, the first Prime Minis-
tership of Indira Gandhi (1966-77), Indira Gandhi's 'emer-
gency' suspension of normal democratic processes (1975-77)
and the defeat of Indira Gandhi's Congress Party by the
newly
formed Janata Morcha party in 1977. Perhaps more importantly,
 126 Novels and criticism

Midnight's Children is a novel that is

preoccupied at theI
of ideas by history and historicity, by the ways in which hic
is recorded, by the techniques with which a period is
conjured
and contained (or not contained), and by the ways in which the
individual 'historiographer understands (or
misunderstands) hic

relationship with his material. In these respects

all
Midnight's
Children seems to contorm to the broad definition
of the
historical novel offered by Avrom Fleishman in his
influential

study of the genre The English Historical Novel: WNalier Scot

to Virginia Woolf. "'What makes a historical novel
historical',
according to Fleishman, 'is the active presence of a
concept of
history as a shaping force, and Midnight's Children (though
its

narrator Saleem sometimes labours under the delusion that he

is a
shaper of history rather than a subject of history) reflects an
awareness throughout that individual lives
and national experi
ences are the of
products material processes, and, as such, are
shaped by history.21
Harry Shaw's contention in The Forms
that historical
of Historical Fiction
novels
'foreground history by representing
"historical milieux'
with a
seems to allow fora significant degree of also
probability
definition of
ical Midnight's Children as a histor
fiction, since
Rushdie's novel not
of
history but gives its
only foregrounds a Se
locations
instance) sufficient
(Bombay, Kashmir, Delhi,
IO1
'probability' to allow readers to believe that
historically real times
It and places are
may be being described.2 Of
objected that the coursS
compromised by his probability of
and Rushdie's locations 1
historical
simultaneous use of
that the error. fabulism,
anachronisi
criterionof Importantly, however,
er, Shaw also insis
"fidelityto 'probability' does not also
'also
the external meansstraightforwarard
world that a work
depend upon
and how resents', but can
patterns, consistentlyy a work represents, Du
mistakes of

Ciously
Midnight's Children
historical may
follows its
follows
o
its own rules
facts',but incorporate purposeful
representhow an does it
purpo
a so in
misunderstood individual order to vera-
Children
is may
viable
historical
might have v
and
always incorporate
orporate
designed to
moment.
elements of
understood
Likewise,
a
ht's
make Midni8
fantasy,but the
comment it
fane
fantasy
upon
istorically real
historically
Iea
 From science fiction to history 127

or In these senses Midnight's Chil-

periods places.
ruations,
because it is consistent to the criteria of
Temains historical
historical veracity
that it sets up within itself.

The identification of Midnight's Children as a historical

narrative is, to some extent, supported by parallels between

Rushdie's novel and established works of historicalfictionsuch as

Walter Scott's genre-defining historical novel Waverley (1814)

Not only does Scott, like Rushdie, make free use of fantasy and

wilful anachronism, there are also revealing structural similari-

ties between the two fictions. Both are, to borrow Rushdie's own
phrase, books 'about one person's passage through history' (SRI,
both use a
25), youthful and unreliable protagonist to
gain a
unique perspective on historical events and both are
Bildung-
SToman or
'coming of age' novels, in which historicalmaterial is
transformed into
biography, or in which is used in an
biography
attemptto controland order In both cases, moreover, the
history.24
novels set out to
thematise the
relationship between the individual
hero and the broader
national and collective
which he experiences through
lives; a quality that, for a number of
at the commentators, is
very core of the definition of the historical
The novel.
similaritybetween the two writers, extends
not just to strikingly,
structuraland formal definitionsof the novel but also
to subject matter and political
his significance.Sir Walter Scott, in
day, was, like Rushdie,
exploring periods of cultural transi-
tion that
resulted from colonial
(particularly English colonial)
vities. Scott's Waverley, notably, concerns the shittingpower
relations between Jacobite supporters of the Stuart line and the
of
TOrces modernity represented by the English Hanoverians. In
ns
(1819), likewise, Scott makes dramatic
later novel lvanhoe

capital out of the clash between indigenous Saxon culture in

medieval England and the culture of the occupying Normans.

in of tran-
Rushdie's comparably, locates itself
fiction, the period
Sition between the colonial occupation of India by the British

and India's and Pakistan's emergence as states.

a post-colonial
Different though the periods that Scott and Rushdie treat inevi-
the kinds of political negotiations
tably are,and differentthough
involved must be, both writers are interestedin how competing
 128 Novels and criticism

cultural interests relate to one another, and in the kinde

of
accommodation these or tail to find. In
interests find, both
cases,
moreover, it is the hybridisation of culture that results from thoa
colonial and post-colonial collisionof cultural forms that is seen
as the dominant and defining characteristicof the period beino
Ivanhoe describes the hybridisation of
represented. English
culture after the invasion of Saxon England by the Normans
and Waverley describes the hybridisation of Jacobite Highland
Scotland in the face of British Hanoverian ascendancy. Likewise,
Rushdie's novels describe the intensified hybridisation of an

already hybrid Indian national culture after the colonisation of

India by the British, and the further hybridisation of British
culture both in India during the colonial period and in Britain
as a result of post-colonial migrations.
The shared interestof both writers in the theme of cultural

hybridisation most apparent in the figures of their heroes,

is
the
who are frequently presented as products, quite literally, of
of their
cultural and political confusion that is characteristic
his
time. Waverley, through his father, and initially through
but
the Hanoverian king,
army commission, owes obedience to and his own
has considerable sympathies, through his uncle
He theretore
romantic inclinations,with the Scottish Jacobites.
a tocal

becomes the mediating figure who is able

to provide
current
into the
for the assimilation of the Stuart loyalists
point the dominant
regime. lvanhoe, similarly,reveals
ianoverian
as Scott sees it, bymak"
Cultural conflict of medieval England,
has been disinherited
its titular character an outcast Saxon, who I.
Richard
Norman king,
by his father for his loyal service to the
upon his capa hisis
Tvanhoe's re-assimilationinto society depends by
to reconcile the militant Saxon insurgency represented of

tolerant elements
father Cedric with the more chivalric and
the Norman regime represented by Richard. two
from the
Rushdie's protagonists also tend to descena their
histor

feels define the

(ormore) cultural camps that Rushdie
ical and moment. In Midnight's Children coloniser
political iser,
and ni
biological child of Methwold,
the departing English and.Ahmed
Amina
Wanita, a low-class Hindu; he is raised by
 From science fiction
to
history 129
bourgeois Indian Muslims, and he later
adopts various father
figures, including his uncle Zulfikar, a General
in the
Pakistani
army. Likewise, Omar Khayam, the
'peripheral' hero of Shame
(S, 24), is the product of an illicit
union between a
English sahib and one of three departing
possible Indian mothers. Whilst
Rushdie, like Scott,uses
hybridised heroes asa means of
hending cultural transition,however, the compre-
allegiancesof Rushdie's
protagonists are both more and more ambiguous than
complex
Scott's. The allegiances of Scott'sheroes are
divided along
fairly
straightforward binary lines, between two
competing causes
(though class as well as culture sometimes
complicates the rela-
tion). They are, moreover,
allegiances that may be reconciled
- -
or assimilated into a new
sense of cultural
wholeness in thee
long term. Hence, Ivanhoe fuses Saxon and
Norman interests
in order to achieve a more
sense of an
composite 'English' iden-
tity;Waverley fuses English and Scottish interests in order to
achieve a more
composite sense of 'British'identity, and these
new forms of
composite identity remain opposed to
forms of cultural 'other
identity that, for Scott, are beyond the
pale.
Englishness in Ivanhoe, for instance, though a
hybrid category
in itself, is defined in radical
still
opposition to the'foreignness
of the Saracens that
Richard has been fighting in the
Holy Land
or the Jewishness of the character
Isaac of York.
Rushdie's heroes, in contrast to this, are defined
by multiple
allegiances, of class, culture and not all of which are
gender,
certain, and not all of which to
help clarify cultural identity.
Saleem, unlike Waverley, is not sure whom he should claim as
father, or how to
a

organise the different aspects ot his cultural

identity. The effect of this complication and
multiplication of
Cultural in
allegiance Rushdie is to produce forms of identity that
be reduced to
cannot any singular conception of selt. For Rushdie,
there is no 'new'
coherent form of identity that can be set, once
in
more, opposition to other coherent forms of identity. Cultural
diversity in Rushdie's fictions never amounts to but
something,
remains
inexhaustibly (though often truittully)
perplexing
The differences and consonances between Scott and Rush-
die's
understanding of the ways in which competing cultural
 and criticism
130 Novels

become are also revealed by

interests hybridised by thein
their
with the theme of translation - that mutual
fascination mechani
it becomes possible to communicate across
by which borders
and culture. Kushdie is
struggling with the m
of language
ot representing India and Pakistan in t
colonial problem
of English. Scott, in the Scottish fictions
linguistic medium
with the problem of translating the Highland ans,
struggling
and customs, tor a contemporary
their cultures, languages
In the work of both writers the problem of
British readership.
between sites of cultural ditference is explored
communicating
of translating individual words or cultural arte-
through the act
In a scene of Waverley that has excited
facts such as poems.
whilst on
much commentary, the young Englishman Waverley,
thinks he hears his name mentioned
a visit to the Highlands, in Gaelic and
by a Scots bard
in a heroic epic poem being sung
for an explication of the song.
asks his host, Fergus Mac-Ivor, can explain
declines, on the basis that his sister, Flora,
Fergus that they visit Flora
better than he can, and suggests
such things that these
arguing
to request a rendition. Flora, after initially
consents,
interest an English stranger,
cannot possibly
songs
with the following qualification:
to be very ancient, and
Some of these [poems] are said
of the languages of
ever translated into any
it
they are and general
to produce a deep
Civilised Europe, cannot
fail
or
the composition
sensation. Others are more modern,
of more distin-
those tamily bards whom the chieftains
retain as the poet
and historians
guished name and power
of their tribe. These, of course, possess
various degrees
or
r
in translation,
but much ofit must evaporate
merit;
the feelings o
lost
on those who do not sympathise with
the poet.26

Similar concerns about cultural

translatability
are apparent
forward
"
in

Kushdie's fiction but most evident (if we may leap

leap y
which the na
momentarily) in Shame, the novel in been
describes himself as a 'translated man' because he
hdie tells
tells

borne across' (the literal meaning of 'translated,Kust the

us) trom one culture to
another. This act of translation
 From science fictionto
history 131

narrator's view, means that

something has been lost he is
not the person he was when he
set out
-but he clings to the
notion that something has also been gained: "The broken glass
is not merely a mirror of
nostalgia. It is also ... a useful tool
with which to work in the present' (HL,12). This
experience of
translation is also embodied in a more literal sense in
the novel
in its attention to individual Urdu words that are
untranslatable
but that the novel attempts to communicate a sense ot.
Most
significant amongst these words is Sharam,the Urdu word that
is
inadequately rendered in English as Shame, and that Rushdie
attempts to explicate in the writing of the novel itself, which is
titled Shame, and which features various modifications on the
concept of Shamefulness that seem, for Rushdie, to be illustra-
tive of the culture about which he
is writing. The novel thus
becomes a kind of extended act of translation,in which a
cultural,
historical and political experience of Pakistan is 'carried
over
into
English where becomes 'not-quite-Pakistan': a fictional
it

country that is not the same as the

original, but that has validity
in its own
right asa work of imaginative reinvention. In this lies
the
similarity, and subtle differences between Scott and Rush-
die's
conception of translation -
for both writers a third
thing
s created, not the same as that which
was originally the case.
In both
cases, a metaphor for the
give and take, the loss and
8ain, of cultural transition is found in the act of translation. For
Scott,
however, translation is only
capable of a record
making
an inadequate record - of a culture that would be otherwise
lost to
history. The translated poems can thus never be
anything
more than romance. Rushdie is more interested in
creating new
dimens
ensions for cultures
that co-exist in the present. The culture
beir
eing translated is not lost to
history
-a form of pastness that
st be
assimilated with the
contemporary in order to suryive
emory - but is current, co-existing with the
and contemporary
very much alive to
the history (it is lost only to the extent that
'trans
nslated
man', the migrant, no longer experiences that
culture
as'home').
It
might be argued, on this basis, that Rushdie and
Scott are
effectively
writing about different
things: Scott is writing about
 Novels and criticism
132

cultures that no
our capacity to comprehend longer exist
our to
Rushdie is writing about capacity represent differe
the This rent
cultures that co-exist in present. distinction, houa
vever,
is based on an engineered by Scott, for the
illusion
Highland
tribes that Waverley meets are very much of the present, it io

Scott's novel requires that they should

of
only that the logic
be relegated to the past, because they have, in his eyes, become
outmoded in the tace of English colonial hegemony. What
Scott is in fact expressing is the desire that signs of difference

that might with the normative culture established as

conflict

'modern' should be consigned to the picturesque graveyard of

Romance, in order to eliminate any threat to the commercial
was making possible in Scotlandin
'progress' that modernity
the early nineteenth century. In this sense Scott and Rushdie
are dealing with identical manifestations of cultural resistance
to colonialism, but valuing those forms of cultural resistance in

different ways. Both are concerned with locationsof culture that

resist the 'modernity' brought about by English colonialism,
are
but, whereas in Scott's fiction these anti-colonial discourses
as the Gothic), in Rushdie's
consigned to the past (as Romance,
work the anti-colonial discourses that 'progressive colonial
in
history would like to consign to the past consistently return
order that they can actively threaten colonialist claims to hege

mony.
Ine distinction between these two approaches to colonialism
to
attitude
1S perhaps illustrated most vividly in each novelist's
the hoe
English language. For Scott, in the opening pages ot vann
a
is as the language that makes possible tortu
English presented
itous fusion of cultural influences.After the conquest of
Willa
of Scott notes:
Normandy,

our,generations had not to blend the hostile

sufficed

blood
of the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons, or to inite,
by common language and mutual interests, two nhost
races,
one of which still felt the elation of triumph,Wne
the other
groaned under all the consequences of ae

By sheer pressure of time, however:

 From science fiction to
history 133

the necessary intercourse between the lords of the

soil,
and those oppressed inferior beings by whom the soil was
cultivated,occasioned the gradual formation of a
dialect,
compounded betwixt the French and the Anglo-Saxon, in
which they could render themselves
mutually intelligible
to each other, and from this
necessity arose by degrees
the structure of our present English
language, in which
the speech of the victors and the
vanquished have been so
happily blended
together.

In somelimited senses this description of the fusion ot

languages
of coloniser and colonised is parallel to the
representations, by
Indian-English novelists, of the relationship between Indian
and English. They too argue that the process of
idiom literary
colonisation has given rise to a new linguistic register, neither
Indian nor English but something in between. In Scott's account
of the creation of English, however, language becomes a site of
wherein the antagonistic cultures of coloniser and
coalescence,
colonised may begin to fuse into a single culture.The meeting of
the languages, in this capacity, since it serves to defuse cultural

and pave the way for cultural accommodation, is a sign

conflict

of the decline of political opposition and the attainment of

consensus. For Rushdie and other Indian novelists who write in

English, by contrast, post-colonial writers actively intervene in

the language of the coloniser in to carve out
order large terri-
tories for themselves within its frontiers'(THL, 64). [W]e can't

the British did;... it needs

Simply use the language in the way
remaking for our own purposes', Rushdie argues:
Those of us whodo use English do so in spite of our
or perhaps because of that, perhaps
ambiguity towards it,
because we can find in that linguistic struggle a reflection
struggles taking place in the
of other real world, struggles

between the cultures within ourselves and the influences

at work upon our To conquer English may be to
societies.
free. (IHL, 17).
complete the process of making ourselves

This talk
ofstruggle is very different from Scott'svision of benefi-

Cent commingling. Whilst for Scott,the anterior culture is trans-

lated to the in order that it might be preserved
colonising culture
 and criticism
Novels
134

as a site
of touristic nostalgia,
hdie the on
in Rushdie

far more agency,

with far agency as
as a
a forco ed
once-colonised
force that can
can
is presented, culture
culture in orderth
in order; that it
culture might
into the colonising
colonising
itself that culture. Interestino
translate effect upon ingly
transformatory between Indian and Enpli
have a
talks of the relationship
Rushdie
still
(lHL, 65)
-a development where
dialectic
ot two older things. Bit
as a 'post-colonial by the
fusion
is produced ofthe
a new thing in Rushdie's understanding
ditterence
a crucial Scott in the Preface to
presented by
there is
and the dialectic not into English,neither
dialectic, does disappear
Indian idiom of
lvanhoe. eliminate other forms
of Indian-English French and
with Scott's Norman
creation
does the the case
as is and English
English
available, of Indian idiom
the meeting that will
Rather, to both languages
Anglo-Saxon. dimension
another
creates them. Rush-
with,
language creative antagonism
and in but proliterates
exist alongside,
thus, eliminate difference less.
does not, rather than
die's dialectic
social complexity Tet us
towards greater as Rushdie notes,
it tending creates complexities',
And if history mpe
them'(IHL, 65).
not try to simplify Even

an interest
and Rushdie share
whilst Scott culture
In broad terms, then, national
in which
in moments of cultural transition, by variant
become conflicted
identity
anguage and personal an Enlightenment
and allegiances, Scott promotes of once poten
sites
tent
interests

view of history as a series of

assimilations
an anti-Enlightenment
of difference, whilst Rushdie promotes
deconstruct Enlighten-
that determined to
is
progress
historiography and historical
ment conceptions of cultural coherence becaus
but primarily nin
Rushdie does this fora number of reasons,
Was used
y
the Enlightenment pattern of 'progress iystify their
thelt

justity
colonisers to support and
teenth-century European culturesseer
other
conquest of, and attempted assimilation of, in
t
as backward' or less civilised. of endings
Mythologies acc ompa-
and
context, have tended to justify acts ofcolonialism
the destructio
of violence.In Scott'svision of history

r
nying acts
n is
is regt
egret
res
personal suffering resulting from colonial collision needs
d
that
table, but
necessary,because 'history is a nar arrative
 From science fiction to
history 135

to get from one place (less advanced) to another

place (more
advanced). Thus, the decimation of the
Highland tribes, whilst a
tragic narrative in its own right, becomes
comprehensible, even
to a broader,
desirable, according Whig vision of history as a
march towards Hanoverian modernity. This aspect of Scott's
work is
expressed concisely by Georg Lukács in his
study of the
historical novel. Scott, he is not blind to the
argues,
suffering
incurred in the dialectical advances of
history, he has 'seen the
endless field of ruin, wrecked
existences, wrecked or wasted
heroic, human endeavour, broken social
formations etc.', but he
presents these forms of suttering as 'the
necessary preconditions
of the end result'.23
Rushdie, by contrast, whilst
these forms of recognising
suttering as characteristic of human
colonial history,
particularly history in which a
culture takes self-styled modernising
it
upon itself to 'civilise'cultures that are
as 'less presented
advanced', sees these historical
calamities not as 'neces-
sary
preconditions' but as violent
interventions by an
force. He sees them aggressive
as violent
interventions rather than
sary preconditions, neces-
moreover, because he does not
importance of the recognise the
events are
ideologically construed 'end result' that these
necessary preconditions ot.