Assignment Paper No. 202 : Fragmented Nation, Fragmented Self: Postcolonial Identity in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

Fragmented Nation, Fragmented Self: Postcolonial Identity in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

This blog is a part of the assignment of Paper 107: Literary Theory & Criticism and Indian Aesthetics 

Academic Details:

Name : Jay P. Vaghani

Roll No.         : 06

Sem. : 2

Batch : 2024-26

E-mail : vaghanijay77@gmail.com   

Assignment Details:

Paper Name : Literary Theory & Criticism and Indian Aesthetics 

Paper No. : 109

Paper Code : 22402

Unit : 2- Northrop Frye's The Archetypal Criticism

Topic :“The Archetypal Feminine: The Mother and Virgin Archetypes in Literature and Their Subversions”

Submitted To : Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Submitted Date : April 17, 2025

The following information—numbers are counted using QuillBot:

Words         : 1784

Characters         : 13212

Characters without spaces : 11502

Paragraphs         :98

Sentences         : 162

Reading time         :7 m 8 s

Table of Contents

Personal Information

Assignment Details

Abstract

Introduction

The Nation as Narrative: Homi Bhabha’s Perspective

Dualism and Despotism: The Rushdiean Irony

Alternate Genesis: Rewriting History and Myth

Imaginary Homelands: Memory, Exile, and Identity

Hybridity and the Postcolonial Condition

Conclusion

Abstract

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981) redefines the boundaries of postcolonial literature by merging personal history with the birth of a nation. This paper explores how Rushdie employs magic realism and narrative fragmentation to symbolize the fractured identity of postcolonial India. Drawing on Homi K. Bhabha’s ideas of hybridity and narration, Edward Said’s notion of exile, and Joanne Sharp’s geographical reading of “imaginary homelands,” the assignment examines how Saleem Sinai’s story becomes a metaphor for India’s struggle with memory, modernity, and multiplicity. Through the use of allegory, Rushdie portrays the “nation” as an unstable narrative—constantly rewritten by its storytellers.

Introduction

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is one of the most influential postcolonial novels of the twentieth century, blending personal memory, political history, and mythical storytelling. Published in 1981, it narrates the life of Saleem Sinai, born at the exact moment of India’s independence, whose telepathic powers connect him to other “midnight’s children” born in the first hour of freedom.

The novel reimagines Indian history through the unreliable and fragmented narrative of Saleem, reflecting Rushdie’s belief that nations themselves are “constructed fictions.” As Homi K. Bhabha (1994) observes, postcolonial identity emerges “in-between” fixed categories—neither purely colonial nor fully independent. Rushdie’s work exemplifies this liminal space where memory and imagination shape national identity.

The Nation as Narrative: Homi Bhabha’s Perspective

In The Location of Culture (1994), Homi Bhabha conceptualizes the “nation” as a narration—a story told and retold to construct collective identity. Midnight’s Children embodies this idea through its self-conscious narrator, Saleem, who repeatedly questions the accuracy of his own story. His narrative oscillates between personal confession and national chronicle, blurring the line between history and fiction.

Saleem’s fragmented storytelling mirrors Bhabha’s notion of the “in-between” space—where hybrid identities are negotiated rather than defined. By refusing linear chronology, Rushdie subverts colonial historiography and instead presents an alternative narrative of India that values multiplicity over unity.

Dualism and Despotism: The Rushdiean Irony

M. Keith Booker (1990) interprets Rushdie’s fiction as a critique of dualistic thought—especially the binaries of East/West, self/other, and good/evil. In Midnight’s Children, this dualism manifests through Saleem’s physical and psychological disintegration, representing the fragmentation of postcolonial India.

Rushdie exposes how rigid categories—religious, cultural, or political—become tools of despotism. Saleem’s body, constantly breaking down, becomes a metaphor for the nation’s vulnerability to division and authoritarian control. Booker argues that Rushdie transforms dualism into irony: rather than seeking synthesis, he celebrates contradiction as the essence of postcolonial identity.

Alternate Genesis: Rewriting History and Myth

Indira Karamcheti (1986) reads Midnight’s Children as an “alternate Genesis,” where Rushdie reconstructs the origin of the Indian nation not as divine creation but as human invention. Saleem’s claim to be “handcuffed to history” redefines the relationship between individual destiny and national history.

The novel’s mythic framework—Saleem’s miraculous birth, his prophetic powers, and his eventual disintegration—invokes the biblical, Quranic, and Hindu cosmologies, blending them into a secular myth of nationhood. Through this intertextual play, Rushdie asserts the right of postcolonial writers to reimagine the past through hybrid narrative forms.

Imaginary Homelands: Memory, Exile, and Identity

Joanne Sharp (1996) extends Rushdie’s own concept of “imaginary homelands” by linking literature and geography. She argues that Midnight’s Children transforms the nation into a space of imagination rather than a fixed territory. Saleem’s storytelling becomes an act of mapping emotional and historical landscapes, where memory fills the gaps left by exile and loss.

Edward Said’s Reflections on Exile (2008) similarly describes exile as a “restless state of being,” marked by nostalgia and creativity. For Rushdie, exile is both physical and psychological—a condition that allows critical distance from nationalist dogma. Thus, Saleem’s fragmented narrative is not a failure but a creative re-claiming of belonging through storytelling.

Hybridity and the Postcolonial Condition

Rushdie’s characters exist in a hybrid world where colonial and indigenous elements merge. His playful use of English, infused with Indian idioms and rhythms, exemplifies linguistic hybridity. As Dr. Prabha Parmar (2021) observes, Rushdie “Indianizes” the English language, turning it into a vehicle for postcolonial self-expression.

The novel’s hybridity extends to its structure—mixing political satire, autobiography, and myth. This narrative multiplicity reflects Bhabha’s “third space” of enunciation, where meaning is continuously negotiated. In Rushdie’s India, no identity remains pure; everything is contaminated, layered, and alive.

Conclusion

Midnight’s Children transforms the history of a nation into the history of a self. Through Saleem Sinai, Rushdie reveals that identity—personal or national—is never whole but always in flux. By merging magic realism with postcolonial theory, Rushdie challenges the grand narratives of colonial and nationalist history, offering instead a fragmented yet deeply human vision of belonging.

In the words of Bhabha, nations “emerge from the act of narration.” Rushdie’s narrative thus becomes both an artistic and political act—an affirmation that the stories we tell shape the worlds we inhabit.

References 

Bhabha, Homi K. "The Novel as Narration." The Location of Culture, 1994.

Booker, M. Keith. “Beauty and the Beast: Dualism as Despotism in the Fiction of Salman Rushdie.” ELH, vol. 57, no. 4, 1990, pp. 977–97. JSTOR,

https://doi.org/10.2307/2873093. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.

Karamcheti, Indira. “Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’ and an Alternate

Genesis.” Pacific Coast Philology, vol. 21, no. 1/2, 1986, pp. 81–84. JSTOR,

https://doi.org/10.2307/1316415. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.

Parmar , Dr. Prabha. “Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal.”

The-Criterion, 2021, www.the-criterion.com/V12/n2/IN11.pdf. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.

Sharp, Joanne P. “Locating Imaginary Homelands: Literature, Geography, and

Salman Rushdie.” GeoJournal, vol. 38, no. 1, 1996, pp. 119–27. JSTOR,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/41146709. 4. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.