Thinking Activity on Salman Rushdie and his essays

 Sulman Rushdie and his Essays 

Learning process is life long process. And learning to various resource person is the tradition of our Department of English. Every year we have different guests lectures on different subjects. Here I would like to include one more point that learning through technology is even more important. Corona crises gave us new chance to enhance our creativity and become more knowledgeable in technological field.

We had five days guest lectures on 

" Post Colonial Literature " by Dr. Balaji Ranganathan sir from central university of Gujrat. 

✒31st October 2020 : Discussion on " Black Skin white mask. 

✒1st November 2020 : Discussion on " Black Skin White Mask. "

✒2nd November 2020 : Discussion on " Orientalism " by Edward Said.

✒3rd November 2020 : Discussion on " A Tempest " by Aime Ceasar.

✒4th November 2020 : Discussion on some from " Imaginary Homeland " by Salman Rushdie. 

We are fortunate that it was totally a new experience. We learnt a lot from Dr. Balaji Ranganathan sir. On first day 31st October he started with Frantz Fanon's " Black Skin White Mask. "

Salman Rushdie is the most controversial writer among Indian writing in English. His book published under the title “Imaginary Homeland” is the collection of the essay written between 1981 and 1992. All the essays are based on Salman Rushdie’s experience of the contemporary time scenario. This book is the collection of the controversial issues of the decade. In those days Indira Gandhi was the prime minister of India.

“This book is an incomplete, personal view of the interregnum of 1980s, not all of whose symptoms it has to be said, were morbid.” (introduction-1) It clearly says that all are his personal views that may be are may not be completely right, according to him it was a decade, what Gramsci has said “the old was dying and yet new could not be born.” (Rushdie, 1992)

♧“IMAGINARY HOMELANDS” :-

This essay was written after the publication of the Midnight’s Children. This never was well responded in western countries but, in Indian it was rejected by Indians, and it was a request from a diasporic writer to the country of his origin to accept him.

It is written out of anguish to go to the roots of one’s origin. The desire of belonging to somewhere, it is the desire of an individual to claim a country as his/her homeland.  So, let’s analyze the essay in detail.

♧Problems with ‘Midnight’s Children’ :-

Rushdie starts his essay with a photograph which was taken in 1946 before his birth in India. This photo was an inspiration for the novel ‘Midnight’s Children’. When he was writing ‘Midnight’s Children’ very far from India, it is India from macrocosm view. He says. “it may be that writers in position exiles or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss. The physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will in short create fiction, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homeland, India in mind.” (10.pg) Further he declares that

“What he was actually doing was a novel of memory and about the memory.” Thus, it is India of his memory and of his perspective. There he presented his version of India. Presentation of the dark picture and political matter in ‘Midnight’s Children’ drags the work in political controversy. And as an answer to that he gives explanation.

“I wasn’t trying to write about the emergency in the same way as I wrote about event halt a century earliest. I felt it would be dishonest to pretend, when writing about the day before yesterday, that it was possible to see the whole picture. I showed certain blobs and slabs of the scene.”

 Further he takes support of playwright for the justification of his act, he writes, the description itself is a political act, and for him “politician and writers are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own image; they fight for the same territory and the novel is one way of denying the official, politicians’ version of truth.”  (14.pg)

♧ Commonwealth literature does not exist  :-

♧What is commonwealth Literature? :-

“Many of the delegates, I found, were willing freely to  admit that the term 'Commonwealth literature' was a bad one. South Africa and Pakistan, for instance, are not members of the Commonwealth, but their authors apparently belong to its literature. On the other hand, England, which, as far as I'm aware, has not been expelled from the Commonwealth quite yet, has been excluded from its literary manifestation. For obvious reasons. It would never do to include English literature, the great sacred thing itself, with this bunch of upstarts, huddling together under this new and badly made umbrella.” (Salman Rushdie)

The term "commonwealth" has a long history. It was first used by Oliver Cromwell, after establishing the republican  government in England in 1649. Literally it implied common good or public good; a body-politic in which power is with the people. It came into discuss as a form of government for nearly 300 years, till it was resurrected in the statue of Westminster 1931, when with the creation of the dominions, the British Empire was re-christened as the British commonwealth of Nations. Commonwealth literature concept came into practice in the mid-twentieth century, there are various factors that were responsible feor its growth in the nineteenth century.
important aspect of so-called Commonwealth literature may be that it is written in one place by people from another place. Whereas an earlier generation of writers settled in Britain, many contemporary authors have chosen to live in Canada or the United States. A significant part of the West Indian, or Caribbean, diaspora (itself part of the African diaspora) has found itself in Canada, alongside the Indian/Asian diaspora.


According to Rushdie, one of the rules, one of the ideas on which the edifice rests, is that literature is an expression of nationality. Literature is a general representation of cultural particularities  that is, literature varies from culture to culture, from one period to another. There is another element of literature that shocks the literary mind. A respectable literary piece, according to Rushdie must meet the demands of authenticity. Authenticity demands that sources, forms, style, language and symbol all derive from a supposedly homogenous and unbroken tradition.

There is where tragedy falls to the ground. What the term authenticity reveals, so much in the use inside the little world of Commonwealth literature would seem ridiculous outside this world. Now, the lexicon of Commonwealth literature (as it applies to the literary aspect of British colonialism) is an innovation. Literary critics often praise the achievements of Commonwealth literary figures, forgetting the most essential element of literature. Today, literary works are not mutually exclusive  in the sense that, they are simultaneously influenced by different cultures. In some Indian novels, both the form and style resemble that which Europeans used in the early 20th century. This is not an intentional event. Many of these writers are Western educated. As such, it is inevitable that their style would follow the Western model.

♧ Attenborough's Gandhi :-

   The film is about a biography,not a political work .even if one aspects this distinction, one must reply that  a biography, if it is not turn into hagiography,(see only one side) aspects of the subjects as well as loveable side.Attenborough’s Gandhi –essay deals with the Indian leader called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

        Looking at Postcolonial way. In this essay he deconstruct the movie ‘Gandhi’ by Attenborough. Ben kinglsy has played role of Gandhiji this movie. Beginning of the essay he saying that “ Deification is an Indian disease”. In India , Gandhi is higher than anyone but he has a question (Postcolonial mind always with questions)which he asked to people many a time  –

 “ why should American academy wish to help him by offering in temple eight glittering statuettes to a film.” 

in answer Rushdie might be viewing Gandhi as a mystical  person. India is the fountain head of the spirituality .Gandhi is the famous figure and leader of India. Here in the movie Attenborough has compred Gandhi with Christ. He also said that anything can be achieved through submission, self-sacrifice, and Non-violence.

              First of all, why they have chosen Gandhi? Not any other patriotic figure or spiritual figure like Sardar Patel?ShubhaBhose? Why no Tagore? The answer is that theey want to represent Gandhi as Torch- bearer of Non-violence .if the opposition and the independence movement is important they can choose Bose, but Bose is not chose as he is enough strong and intelligent that he could push out to the Britisher with Violent.

                In the Attenborough has not presented Gandhi’s thought about ‘ Brahmcharya’ . The book ‘ My Experiments with the truth ’ is not fully justified we know Gandhiji’s notion and practice about Brahmcharya, the matter is of ambiguity .Jwaharlal Nehru has been presented as the disciple of Gandhiji. While actually he sharing the same stage with Gandhiji. In this movie he is very minor character and follower of Gandhiji. Mohammad ali Jinnah is presented as villaneous figure for India .actually Jinnah has same intellect and passion for India as Gandhiji as ,in movie his character presented as Count Dracula. 

♧ Hobson Jonson  :-

In Salman Rushdie's " Historical Note" to the Linguasia ( 1994 ) edition of Hobson Jobson ,writer , cultural historian and late centenarian anglophile Nirad C. Chaudhuri points out that Hobson Jobson are really the creation of " the British working Bees of the empire. " who worked all over the country. Often in small towns where one was the single white man forced to creat shortcut in their speech by employing Indian words, mostly of north Indian origin but anglicized phonetically. 

" Imaginary Homeland is in fact a review of the reissue of Hobson Jobson. In spite of the occationally dismissive prose of the essay which ends with a variation of Rhett Butler's last words to Scarlett " O' Hara. " Rushdie's excitement with this volume is evident from Rushdie's own use of " dam" meaning small change in " The Satanic Verses. "

♧ References :-

Mishra, Vijay. “Rushdie-Wushdie: Salman Rushdie's Hobson-Jobson.” New Literary History, vol. 40, no. 2, 2009, pp. 385–410. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27760263. Accessed 23 Nov. 2020.

Rushdie, S. (1992). Imaginary Homelands. In S. Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands (pp. 1-25). London.