This presentation is based on 'Midnight's Children' as 'a Historical Fiction'

1. Midnight’s
Children as
‘a Historical
Novel’

2. Personal Information
★ Name :- Aarti Bhupatbhai Sarvaiya
★ Roll No :- 01
★ Enrollment No :- 4069206420220027
★ Sem :- 3(M.A.)
★ Batch :- 2022-2024
★ Paper No. :- 202
★ Paper Code :- 22407
★ Paper Name :-Indian English Literature - Post-Independence
★ Submitted to :- Smt. S. B. Gardi, Department of English,M.K.B.U.
★ Dated on :- 2023
★ Email :- aartisarvaiya7010@gmail.com

3. About The Writer
Midnight’s
Children as ‘a
Historical Fiction’
About Midnight’s
Children
Conclusion
Table of Contents
References

4. About The Writer
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British-American novelist and
essayist. He first achieved wide recognition with his second novel, Midnight's
Children (1981), which won the Booker Prize. Much of his early fiction is set
on the Indian subcontinent, while his later fiction often explores the
perspectives of expatriates from the developing world living abroad. His style
is often classified as magical realism mixed with historical allusions, and a
dominant theme of his work is the story of the many connections, disruptions,
and migrations between the East and West.
Rushdie has received many awards for his writings, including many of
literature's highest honours, including:Aristeion Prize (European Union) , Arts
Council Writers' Award , Booker Prize for Fiction , Whitbread Novel Award
(twice) etc.
Major Works :-Novels (fiction) , Grimus (1975) , Midnight's Children (1981)
, Shame (1983) , The Satanic Verses (1988) , Fury (2001) , Shalimar the
Clown (2005) , The Golden House (2017). (Encyclopedia)

5. About Midnight’s Children
Key Facts :-
Author :- Salman Rushdie
Type Of Work :- Novel
Date Of First Publication :- 1981
Narrator :- Saleem Sinai
Point Of View :-This novel is narrated in the first person.
Setting (Time) :- From 1915 to 1977
Setting (Place) :- India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh
Protagonist :- Saleem Sinai

6. About Midnight’s Children
Midnight’s Children is a faux autobiography in which
personal farce and political realism fuse, only to
disintegrate into contingency and absurdity. Its narrator,
Saleem Sinai, combines the story of his own childhood
with that of India itself, having been born at midnight on
the day of India’s independence from British colonisation.
Saleem asserts, ‘To understand just one life, you have to
swallow the world’, and this elastic novel twangs enjoyably
in all directions to encompass its narrator and his
relatives, as well as the nation and its inhabitants.
(Bidisha)

7. Midnight’s Children as ‘a Historical Fiction’
● Midnight's Children is a unique work that presents the history of post-Partition India
through the use of fiction, and stands as a primary document, in that it was written by
someone who experienced the time period described in the book. Such a work is crucial
to understanding the complexity, the mix of politics, religion, and national identity, that
marks modern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. (Fredrick)
● The novel tells the narrative of Saleem’s family and the previous events leading up to
India’s independence and separation.(Prakash Babu)
● In Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie presents the complexities of life in post-Colonial
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Through a novel, Rushdie has brought the history of
India in the last half of the twentieth-century to a wider audience. (Fredrick)

8. Midnight’s Children as ‘a Historical Fiction’
● Saleem and the new state of India are symbolic
counterparts. Both were born at midnight on August 15,
1947 along with other 1001 children. After the loss of
one power Saleem gains another, for his enormous and
extraordinary nose becomes capable of scent
difference far beyond normal. The narrator Saleem
constantly relates his life to India’s. His birth,
enlargement, growth and obliteration are India’s and
importantly, his central character-trait has been a failure
to realise what way things are occurring. The
characters seem to stroll through the pages of history,
crashing with significant moments in the progress of
India outwardly by catastrophe. (Prakash Babu)

9. Midnight’s Children as ‘a Historical Fiction’
● The protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children is Saleem Sinai and through him
Rushdie tries to make the connection between historical and personal. This boundary between
historical and personal, in the novel, is blurred in such a way that historical becomes personal and
personal becomes historical and what is exactly personal and historical remains unclear for the
reader. Saleem Sinai’s life is connected to history in such a way that it cannot be
separated.(SRINIVASA)
Salman Rushdie says that history is not only which is documented in historical archives or written in our history
books but it is also which lives in the mind of people who saw it happening. Thus, There are alternative histories
also that are based on memories. (SRINIVASA)
● Saleem , who is both sequenced and supernaturally gifted by the past like his own father. In this
novel, the mixing of the unbelievable and ordinary, which is a feature of magical realism,
appears Indian as the characters concerned in contemporary political and social disturbances
also on the power of mythic heroes.(Prakash Babu)

10. Midnight’s Children as ‘a Historical Fiction’
● One of the purposes of historical writing is to recreate, as closely, as possible, the elements of
the past. "Through the form of fiction, Rushdie recreates life in post-Partition India in a way that
reflects the outlook of Indians whose daily lives were handcuffed to history". (Fredrick)
● In the novel, Independence and Partition push a vast and varied human and geographical
territory into new identities and self-definitions.(Bidisha)
● Rushdie in the very beginning of the novel tells us that Saleem Sinai is handcuffed to history.
Beginning with Saleem’s birth on the day of India’s independence, Rushdie very beautifully
connects Saleem’s personal life with history as if history is happening for him. (SRINIVASA)

11. Midnight’s Children as ‘a Historical Fiction’
● Rushdie through this novel raises the issue of history being partial or the history presented to
us is in parts. He foregrounds his argument through the episode of perforated sheet in the
novel where Dr. Adam Aziz first sees Naseem Ghani in parts through perforated sheet.
Naseem didn’t show herself to Dr. Aziz until the day they got married. This has the
metaphorical significance because the partial, sequential, and gradual visibility of Naseem
Ghani to Dr. Aziz symbolises the partial history.
● The chattering sound of the teeth is compared to the sound of the guns.
● Through the swapping episode of Saleem and Shiva, Rushdie raises the idea of fictional
history. He questions the authenticity of associating himself with history.
(SRINIVASA)

12. Midnight’s Children as ‘a Historical Fiction’
● Rushdie uses magic realist mode to challenge colonial, official historiography. The choice of
commingling two seemingly antithetical narrative modes is significant. It is often argued that
the dominant narrative mode of the West has been realism, faithful reproduction of empirical
reality into art. On the other hand, the East has been stereotypically described
having/preferring magical narratives. By choosing to relate Indian history in magic realist
mode, Rushdie intermingles objective, scientific and empirical reality with metaphoric,
mystical, and magical realities.
● Thus, Midnight’s Children foregrounds the idea that historical representations are not
objective recuperations of past in the present rather they do reveal mediated, metaphorical,
subjective, and ideological nature of historical representation. (SRINIVASA)

13. Conclusion
Through the form of fiction, Rushdie describes post-Partition India in way
that illuminates a history that has often been distorted and erased.(Fredrick)
The novel is all about time and the character of Saleem Sinai, who is
preoccupied with history. It is very difficult to understand the novel, if the
reader is not familiar with Indian history. Rushdie falls short to provide us
with the real historical India, but rather gives us an alternative India built on
the never happened or in other words - failed history.(Prakash Babu)
Midnight’s Children is an important work in the historiography of modern
India. The complexities of Indian politics,including the tyrannies of Indira
Gandhi, the violence involved in the creation of Bangladesh,and the
relationship Muslims of Pakistan and India, all are revealed in a clear picture
in the course of Rushdie's fable.(Fredrick)

14. References
Bidisha. “An introduction to Midnight’s Children.” The British Library, 25 May 2016, https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-
literature/articles/an-introduction-to-midnights-children . Accessed 16 October 2023.
B,PRIYADARSHINI, PRAKASH BABU,ARCHANA. “HISTORICAL ASPECT IN THE MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN.” HISTORICAL
ASPECT IN THE MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN, 8 August 2017, https://oaji.net/articles/2017/488-1505301253.pdf
. Accessed 17 October 2023.
Fredrick, Peter Shaskey. “(DOC) Midnight's Children: The Novel as History | Peter Shaskey-Fredrick.” Academia.edu, 2008,
https://www.academia.edu/7353942/Midnights_Children_The_Novel_as_History . Accessed 16 October 2023.
"Salman Rushdie." New World Encyclopedia, . 23 Dec 2022, 01:51 UTC. 16 Oct 2023, 16:13
<https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=Salman_Rushdie&oldid=1092590> .
SRINIVASA,KALLUR, G.,Dr. N H. “History and Fiction in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.” IJCRT, 10 October
2022, https://ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT2210254.pdf
. Accessed 17 October 2023.