Metafiction is a type of fiction that is self-referential by drawing attention to itself as an artifact. Historiographic metafiction attempts to confront history through fiction by rewriting history in a way that has not been recorded before. It blurs the line between history and fiction. Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children uses techniques like magic realism, allegory and metafiction to subversively historicize and problematize certain events in Indian history by making the protagonist Saleem's personal life mirror that of India's with magical connections. Through Saleem's "chutnification" or pickling of history, Rushdie undermines conventional ideas of historicity by positing multiple histories. The narrative can

1. Metafiction is a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws
attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between
fiction and reality. Patricia Waugh further comments that contemporary metafictional writing
portrays reality or history as provisional: “no longer a world of external verities but a series of
constructions, artifices and impertinent structures.” Thereby it poses a question to the
relationship between fiction and reality.
inda Hutcheon coined the term “historiographic metafiction”. According to her, it
“attempts to demarginalize the literary through confrontation with the historical, and it
does so both thematically and formally.” They are works which are “intensely self-
reflexive and yet paradoxically also lay claim to historical events and personages. It is the
process of rewriting history through a work of fiction in a way that has not been recorded
before.” They “both re-introduce historical context into metafiction and problematise the entire
question of historical knowledge.” Hence postmodernism challenged the authority of histories by
acknowledging that the fact presented is the author’s subjective interpretation.
The earliest histories contain fictional elements as they are implicit amalgamation of fact and
myth. The composition of the word “history” itself contains the word “story.” Secondly,
Literature and history were considered branches of the same tree of learning. With the rise of
scientific endeavor, the separation of history and literature happened in the nineteenth century.
As realism took root, history came to represent objective fact and the novel came to represent
subjective fiction. Hence, historiographic metafiction “plays upon the truth and lies of the
historical record.”
utcheon also mentioned that many historians have used the technique of fiction to
create the imaginative version of the real world. Therefore, the postmodernist confront
the paradoxes of fictive/historical representation, particular versus general and the
present versus the past. The only problem is these historians are the ones who decide which
events will become facts. Besides, these facts presented by historians are only signs which
according to Hutcheon is a sign within already semiotically constructed contexts; explaining that
our knowledge of the past is only semiotically transmitted.
Since history can be fictional and fiction can be a question of veracity, Historiographic
metafiction installs and then blurs the line between history and fiction is a blurred one. Through
a narrative that is intertextual, it deploys the texts of the past within their own complex textuality.
aleem, the first person autobiographical narrator in the novel, is ‘handcuffed to history’ by
his very birth coinciding with the birth of the nation of India at the stroke of midnight
hour, August 15th, 1947. This renders him obsessed with the idea of mirroring his own life
in relation to that of the nation. Their lives are so intertwined that the personal becomes political
and vice versa. Therefore, through Saleem, Rushdie engages himself in questioning historical
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2. representation by foregrounding the underlying narrativity of historical knowledge. Saleem
questions and challenges, if not denies, the historiographic claims of authentic representation of
past. Thus by blurring the boundaries between fiction and history, Rusdhie, through Saleem,
does a “chutnification of history.” Thes seemingly coherent parallelisms and convergences run
throughout the novel making a medley of history.
Rushdie achieves a level of subversive historicizing by using patterns of allegory, metafiction,
parody and magic realism and in the process, problematise certain known historical events in
Indian history, in order to foreground the ‘storicity’ of historical knowledge.
aleem's personal life seems to be starkly related to the political fate of the nation right
from his birth time. His co-incidental birth at the precise moment of India's independence
lends him magical powers of telepathy and olfaction - he can have a parliamentary
conference with other 'midnight children', sneak in other people's minds and has a strong canine-
like smelling power.
Fathered by history, Saleem rewrites the history of twentieth century India while writing his
autobiography and exploits history to suit his domestic familial history. Important historical
events spanning during this time includes The First World War, Jallianwala Baugh massacre,
Quit India movement, Partition, General Elections, Indo-China war, Indo-Pakistan-Bangladesh
war and The Emergency period. The text is infused with magic realism, for instance - Adam
Aziz's itching nose saves him from the bullets of General Dyer's brigade and Saleem grows into
cracks when the nation undergoes splitting. The liasion between the historical and personal is so
strong that nothing can escape hisotricity. For example, Indo-Pakistan war of 1965 leaves
Saleem "orphaned and purified"; his son Adam, also handcuffed to history suffers from
tuberculosis during emergency, a disease 'darkly metaphorical' and does not convulse till the
emergency ends.
hrough Saleem, Rushdie chutnifies history by undermining the conventional ideas of
historicity by positing a multiplicity of histories. Through this, Saleem metaphorically
compares his narrative as 'pickles of history.' Thus it implies that through chutnification,
history can be preserved since to pickle is to increase the shelf-life. The act of pickling is a self-
reflexive and self-conscious act. According to Hutcheon, chutnification for Rushdie is the
process of paradoxically anti-totalizing the totalized image of history. Each chapter of the novel
is compared to a pickle jar, standing "gravely on a shelf", each labeled with the title of the
chapter and the contents are shaped by its form. To experience the essence of the pickle-jar, we
have to take in its contents, hence, to understand Saleem's chutnified story, we have to "swallow
the world" that comprises of his multitudes. The second purpose of the chutnification of history
is to preserve: "Memory, as well as fruit, is being saved from the corruption of the clocks." In
both the processes, he notes inevitable distortions. First being that, raw materials are given
"shape and form - that is to say, meaning." This can be true in both cases - history-writing as
well as fiction-writing. Hence, memory plays a role in documenting records. In Saleem's case, he
rewrites history only in a way that it will be meaningful to him. Saleem knows that: “Most of
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3. what matters in your life takes place in your absence”, hence memory becomes indispensible
even though he is aware of his faulty recollections and his statements does not concur with
recorded facts of history. This awareness does not disappoint him: “Reality is a question of
perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems-but as
you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible." Thus it supports the
postmodern claims that deciding which 'events' become recorded 'facts' is a matter of re-
remembering, which is subjective in nature to the historian at work.
astly, the narrative in Midnight’s Children can be classified as narcissist. Even though
Saleem’s historicity is questionable, he is conditioned in both his private and public
history despite being historically ex-centric, marginalized and peripheral. He is self-
conscious of his obsession with history that underlines ideological implications. The
egocentricity of Saleem’s historiographic efforts emerges at several places in the novel when
Saleem is trying to fit historical events to his personal purposes-to delay his bodily
disintegration. Therefore he selects self-reflexively what will go in the making of his family
history and thus foregrounds the issue of narrativity of historical representation. He also
deliberately introduces errors in historical narration, to highlight “the possible mnemonic failures
of recorded history and the constant potential for both deliberate and inadvertent error.”
Historical events do not mean things in themselves but rather their meanings are dependence on
the ways they are described and linked together to form a historical narrative. Thus emplotment
is essential as every representation of the past has specific ideological implications. Therefore
history is very much subject to ideological formations and subjective experiences of the one who
is writing and what one intends to process as facts.
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