Nila Dutta Rushdie Presentation

Nila Dutta First Presentation Language and History in Salman Rushdies Midnights Children

The use of language in Salman Rushdies Midnights Children is an interesting topic to consider. The liberal sprinkling of English with Hindi and Urdu words lends a certain exoticism to the novel. Perhaps it helps to situate the novel in its geographical location in the various cities of the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Also, the use of this non English-inflected English can certainly be read as the authors attempt to subvert a language associated with colonial powers. The English of Midnights Children is not the Queens English; it is an English that has metamorphosed into a language suited for use in an ex colony. One might ask who does Rushdie write for? Is it for readers who are familiar with all three languages, Hindi, Urdu, and English? If so, then his readership is rather limited to a privileged few in South Asia, especially in India-Pakistan-Bangladesh and migrants from those countries living abroad. If he writes for the English speaking world in general, then how accessible is the book to readers who are familiar with the English language but not with the various regional languages of India, or at least with Hindi and Urdu? This is the first question I would like to explore. As someone who has various degrees of fluency in the three languages mentioned, I often found myself stopping and rereading words to understand what they were intended to convey. I suppose I could have just read on and not bothered to find out what things meant individually; after all, the novel is multi-layered and I could have followed the twisted plot sufficiently enough to enjoy it. But I dont normally read in that way. And I was concerned that if I didnt get certain allusions or connotations, I would miss something important and not be able to appreciate the novel fully. And after careful re-readings, I think I did get most of the novels allusions.

Nila Dutta Rushdie Presentation

But how much, I wonder, others not in my position, do. For example, how many accepted Rushdie/Saleems explanation that one of the many possible synonyms of Padmas name is one who possesses dung (24). I dont know which synonym Rushdie was thinking of, but unless he knows of an unusual name for the lotus flower (because Padma is variously the lotus and the goddess of wealth who is most associated with it), he or Saleem has gotten it wrong. The lotus flower because it grows in shallow water is often called Pankaj or born out of mud. There is no association of dung with it. But if I didnt know that I would have tried very hard to find connections between Padma and the various mentions of excreta in the novel! Would that have led me in a direction that the author doesnt want us to take? I wonder. I had similar problems with other words such as Funtoosh and the names such as Desmukh (which is not a name one would expect to find in Bangladesh where the reader encounter a character named such.) A related question I have is about Rushdies use of history. How many of his readers who are not from the Indian subcontinent and are not familiar with the minutiae of its history would know the details of the Jallianwallah Bagh killings, the Emergency, the magnitude of the genocide in the Bangladesh War? But is it necessary to be familiar with these actual events to enjoy the novel? No, it isnt, if the novel is to be read just as an exercise in imagination and word play. But, that kind of reading would not be compatible with our image of Rushdie, the politically conscious writer. If the novel is not meant to be read a piece of escapist literature and admired only for its technical virtuosity, then one does benefit from knowing about the history that is continually referred to. I feel especially strongly about the representation of the Bangladesh War. This was an event that many feel got inadequate press in the US because the US at the time of the Bangladesh War sided with Pakistan, the nation from which Bangladesh eventually seceded in 1971. This was a war in which the systematic genocide that was

Nila Dutta Rushdie Presentation

committed by the Pakistan forces has been estimated to be in the seven figures. There was widespread rape and organized killing of intellectuals and people who were involved in political opposition. In the novel, this particular event becomes one of many fantastic events and its magnitude gets diminished. Of course the writer has the right to do as he pleases with history. After all we all know that there is no one history and what gets written gets determined by who tells it. But in giving events like the Bangladesh War an imaginary overlay, I feel Rushdie does tremendous disservice to the people who were directly affected by it. He becomes complicitious in a fictionalizing of history which is dangerous. I am aware that Rushdie addresses these issues in his essay Errata, and he does say that MC is not supposed to be read as history. But the fact remains that he uses real history as a framework of sorts for his novel. And since the timeline for the significant events such as the partition and independence of India and Pakistan, the succession of Nehru by first Sastri and then Indira Gandhi, the Emergency are generally correct, his readers are often led to accept Rushdies depiction of history as fairly true. And therein lies the problem. In his criticism of movies and TV productions that misrepresent India Rushdie has this to say in his essay Outside the Whale: It would be easy to conclude that such material could not possibly be taken seriously by anyone, and that it is therefore unnecessary to get worked up about it. Should we not simply rise above the twaddle, switch off our sets and not care? I should be happier about this, the quietist optionif I did not believe that it matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish; that to do otherwise is to legitimize it (88). Now, I am not suggesting that we dismiss the treatment of history in Rushdies novel as rubbish, because it simply is not rubbish. But I would say along with Rushdie that what one represents and how one does it does matter. And it matters even more than usual if the person doing the representation is Salman Rushdie who is regarded as a major figure in postcolonial literature of

Nila Dutta Rushdie Presentation

the last few decades. And it also matters because the readers of MC are likely to be serious readers who are interested in matters that may not affect them directly in their everyday lives. In other words, a significant number of these readers are likely to be interested in what happened in Bangladesh more than thirty years ago because what happened back then is inextricably linked with what is happening now in that part of the world. So, this is why I feel that in his freeplay with history Rushdie opens up possibilities of interpretation which may have fairly dangerous results and help in our collective amnesia about certain unpleasant historical events.