Between history and memory: Mnemonic reconstruction of a disintegrating subcontinent in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children

This paper argues that the interplay of history and memory in the realm of fiction is a useful dimension to examine some of the complex and multilayered problems related to the culturality and identification in the pre- and post-partition Indian subcontinent. To this end, this paper looks at how Rushdie represents history through the art of mnemonics to showcase the complex historical processes of the subcontinent in the colonial and postcolonial context in Midnight’s Children. Firstly, it contextualizes Rushdie’s representations of cultural dynamics on the subcontinent through the powerful trope of chutney, and maintains that the art of chutneyfying history provides Rushdie with a means of depicting the heterogeneous fabrics intrinsic to the Indian ethos, exemplified as diversity, plurality and intermingling by its very nature. Secondly, it studies the theme of partition to see how Rushdie treats the traumatic experiences of the dispersed ethnicities amidst the political riots in the wake of partition, and by accentuating the prevailing ethnic and religious hatred which causes social conflicts and ethnic divisions and thus afflicting the consumed multitudes, Rushdie deplores the ulterior motives of separatist movements which lead to the consequence of a disintegrating subcontinent. The paper also explores the possibilities of reconstructing cultural and national identity as the displaced ethnicities struggle to survive in the mist of estrangement and alienation as the result of ethnic fissures and religious intolerance. Hence, the intricate relationship between history and memory in Rushdie’s historiographical accounts provides new perspectives on a broader question of how the new cartographies of land and culture pose a direct challenge to the new generations on both sides of the border as to how they should reconcile with the partition trauma, recreate their cultural and national identity and sustaining their subjectivity in the aftermath of the partition.