Saleem's quest for identity in Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" revolves around his unique birth and the supernatural connection he shares with other children born at the same time as India gained independence. This quest explores the complexities of personal identity against the backdrop of India's post-colonial history, reflecting the nation's search for its own identity.

1. Saleem’s Quest for
identity in the
magical world of
Salman Rushdie’s
“Midnight
Children”
Prepared by - Hina
Parmar
Department Of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

2. Personal information
● Name - Hina Parmar
● Roll No - 10
● Sem - 3
● Enrollment no - 4069206420220021
● Batch - 2022-24
● Email - hinaparmar612@gmail.com
● Subject - Saleem’s Quest for identity in the magical world of Salman
Rushdie’s “Midnight Children”
● Paper code - 22407
● Paper no - 202
● Paper - indian English Literature - Post independence
● Submitted to - Smt . S. B. Gardi Department of English, Maharaja
Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

3. Points to Ponder
Salman
Rushdie
Midnight’s
Children
Magical
time world
Saleem’s Quest
for identity in the
magical world of
Salman Rushdie’s
“Midnight
Children”
Treatment of
Time,
Historical
Events, Space
of Origin
and Saleem
Sinai's Life
Quest for
identity as
major theme
in the Indian
diasporic
writing
CONCLUSION
References
What is
‘Identity
Crisis’?

4. Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie is one such distinguished and applauded author of. Indian novels He has thirteen
novels to his credit: Grimus (1975), Midnight's Children (1981), Shame (1983), The Satanic Verses
(1988), Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), The Moor's Last Sigh (1995), TheGround. Beneath Her
Feet (1999), Fury (2001), Shalimar the Clown (2005), The Enchantress of. Florence (2008), Luka and
the Fire of Life (2010), Two Years Eight Months and. Twenty- Eight Nights (2015) and the most
current one The Golden House (2017). He has additionallyauthored East West (a collection of short
stories, 1994) and nonfictional works which encompass The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey
(1987), Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992_2002 (2002), Wizard of Oz and Joseph
Anton : A Memoir (2012).
In his literary works, Rushdie deals with the concept of. nationalism, history, politics, culture,
migration, colonial and postcolonial power structures, freedom of. speech and identity. His works
provide expression to the extensive cultural, historical, religious and political concerns of the Indian
Subcontinent. Most of his literary works set in Indian subcontinent handle the sociopolitical matters of
the subcontinent. (Kazi)

5. Midnight’s Children
❖ Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981) besides being a postcolonial text,
is also a historiographic metafiction. His narcissistic narration that claims to be
‘historical’ evokes several issues positionality, provisionality, intertextuality,
ideology and narrativity that comes very close to ‘historiographic metafiction’- a
coinage from Linda Hutcheon to describe the postmodern interaction/liaison of
historiography and fiction.
❖ Saleem Sinai’s life is connected to history in such a way that it cannot be
separated. So, 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.
❖ Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children proves that, the statement of Linda
Hutcheon that the novel is self-reflexive and lays claim to historical events and
personages. On the other side, it is called as postmodern novel and literature.
(SRINIVASA)

6. ❖ Magical time world refers to Indian history, which Rushdie has placed in this novel.
❖ Magic Realism is the commonest genre which Rushdie uses in his novel. In
Midnight's Children, the reality part is the history of India and the magical part is the
story.
❖ Especially the magical part begins after the birth of 1001 Midnight's Children who
were born on the Midnight stroke between 12 AM to 1AM on India's Independence
dated 15 August 1947.
❖ The characters of the novel go parallel to this magical time world. The characters are
so much mingled to the time world that it seems they are the real part of Indian
history.
❖ The magical time world of Rushdie means the 'magic realism' which the author has
used to explore the significant events in the subcontinent history including the war
between India and Pakistan, and the independence of Bangladesh and the emergency
under Indira Gandhi.
(Dubey)
MAGICAL TIME WORLD

7. ● When we relate this novel to the concept of time metafictional
area develops in it.
● Saleem besides being a fictional character is a creator of fiction,
he is thus in position of power and hence in control of time. As
long as he is re-creating his fictional life story he masters time
and can therefore ignore linearity or chronology and uses time
instead as a flexible background to his narrative.
● We can say that Saleem invents his narrative thus he can also
invent any time structure he wants to. The story goes according
to Saleem along with the time and he seeks his identity in that
time world. (Dubey)
METAFICTIONAL AREA

8. What is ‘Identity Crisis’ ?
❖ The psychological term ‘Identity Crisis’ is defined as ‘a period of uncertainty and
confusion in which a person’s sense of identity becomes insecure, typically due to a
change in their expected aims or role in society.
❖ Ericson, a German born psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on
‘psychological development of human beings,’ coined the term. Identity develops
through experiences of the crisis and contradictions which every individual had to
overcome, in order to raise to the next development phase.
❖ Question of identity has remained a source of conflicts and has led to wars in history.
The search for and discovery of identity has been a recurrent journey throughout
humanity’s history, defined and explored in literary works.
❖ The novelist has tried to deal with the issue of Saleem’s identity inconsiderable detail.
❖ The two most important correlates of his identity presented in the novel are his personal
appearance and his equivocal heritage. There is something uncanny about Saleem’s
personal appearance.(V.GAYATHRI)

9. Saleem’s Quest for identity in the magical world of Salman
Rushdie’s “Midnight Children”
❖ Saleem quest for identity was triggered by the shocking discovery when Marry
Periera confesses that Saleem is not Ahmad and Amina's biological son.
❖ The revelation about Saleem's true parentage represents a major shifting point in
Saleem's identity one of which he can never return.
❖ Saleem the protagonist of the story was born precisely at midnight August 15th
1947, therefore exactly as old as the independent republic of India. He later
discovered that he had telepathic powers, and all children born in India between
12:00 AM and 1:00 AM on that date are imbued with special powers. Saleem uses
his telepathic powers, to assemble conference to discover the meaning of their gifts.
In particular those children born closest to the stroke of Midnight had more powerful
gifts than the others.
❖ (a). Shiva with powerful “Knees”. (b). Parvati had Magical powers so called as
“Parvati Witch”. These two children with notable gifts played major roles in
Saleem’s life.
(Dubey)

10. ❖ The search for origin was especially important for Saleem Sinai because of the
nature of this particular gift of communication he had, but the midnight
children's conference falls apart as the children began to go their separate
ways as they were affected by the religious, culture and class based prejudices
of their parents.
❖ Saleem suffered from Amnesia when he was hit by silver spittoon in an air
attack during Indo Pakistan war and he enters a quasi mythological exile in the
jungle of Sundarban, where he re-endowed his memory.
❖ Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, began a sterilization campaign.
Shortly after the birth of Parvati’s son “Aadam Sinai”, the government
destroyed the Magician’s Ghetto. Parvati died, while Shiva captured Saleem
and brought him to a forced sterilization camp, where all the Midnight’s
children were sterilized and their powers were destroyed.
❖ As Saleem recalled his childhood near the end of his life, he became aware of
the symbolic and tragic role he played in history. Saleem's bodily decay goes
parallel with the progress of his written novel.
(Dubey )

11. Treatment of Time, Historical Events, Space of Origin
and Saleem Sinai's Life
1. On 1947 in Bombay, 1001 Midnight's Children were born, when Marry
Periera disclosed the truth of switching babies.
2. From 20 Oct. 1962 to 21 Nov. 1962 for thirty three days, India and China war
occurred at that time Saleem went for a medical operation.
3. From 26 March 1971 to 16 Dec. 1971 for eight months, India and Pakistan
war occurred. During this time, Saleem was hit by a Silver Spittoon and
loosed his memory.
4. On 1975 in India, Indira Gandhi put Emergency. During this time Saleem met
his Midnight friends, he married Parvati and Saleem's non biological son
Aadam Sinai was born.
★ Tense -
Past, Present and Future become one single entity and space in which Saleem
travels freely, ignoring temporal boundaries. Any clear borders disappear so
that the narrative exists in state and space of fluidity and flux.
(Dubey )

12. Anita Desai’s ‘Bye Bye Black Bird’ Quest for Identity:
Anita Desai explores the issue of identify in terms of individual, social, racial and national identity. Adit,
Dev & Sarah suffer from fragmented psyches because they tend to define themselves through a limited
sense of self and external reality, ignoring or suppressing many other aspects of their existence. The
novelist is famous for her literary presentations of isolation, loneliness, immigration etc. The novel is
divided into three parts. They are first “Arrival”, second “Discovery” and third ‘Recognition & Departure′.
(Jare)
QUEST FOR IDENTITY AS MAJOR THEME IN THE INDIAN DIASPORIC
WRITING
Quest for Identity in V.S.Naipaul’s ‘A House for Mr. Biswas’:
V. S. Naipaul is deeply involved in the colonized people’s quest for order & identity. He makes such aspects as central in
his novel. “A House for Mr. Biswas” is partly autobiographical one. It deals with the strains of troubled past and the
attempts to find a purpose in life. Mr. Biswas, the prominent character of the novel, tries to liberate from dependence by
searching a house for him. The novel depicts Mr. Biswas struggle to safeguard his own identity in the heterogeneous
environment and his attempt to create an authentic and ethnic selfhood. Being autobiographical novel, we can experience
the similitude in the life of Mr. Biswas with the life of Naipaul himself. He himself experienced exile and alienation while
living in Trinidad which is ortrayed through the character of his protagonist.

13. CONCLUSION
Saleem's personal identity is inextricably entwined with that of India. Saleem's disappointment shows
the reflection of the newly forming country's own problems. Saleem wistfully describes the timeless
Kolynos kid, trapped forever in the bill board but free from the ravages of time and age. Saleem longs
for his lost childhood in the same way as India longs back at its ancient past. (Dubey)
Saleem is linked to history by different notes of connection, through many fold relationships, Saleem
faces multiple identities press upon him, a mirror of fragmentation and multiplicity of Indian Society
and the confusion of social, religious, religion and parochial identities under which India suffered.
(Dubey)
Harold bloom says about Midnight's children :- “Reading Midnight's children, I do not find it dated,
neither do I read it merely as elegy / eulogy to a failed experiment, it remains a celebration of India, a
paean to both unity and modiplicity, and both inspiration and challenge to a new generation to
supercade it in style.
(Sona )

14. References
Dubey, Ruchi, and Dr. S k. Tiwari. “SALEEM’S QUEST FOR IDENTITY IN THE MAGICAL TIME WORLD OF SALMAN RUSHDIE'S MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN.”
JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE (JOELL) An International Peer Reviewed(Refereed) Journal, vol. 8, no. 4, 2021, p. 5.
Jare, Dr. M R. “QUEST FOR IDENTITY AS MAJOR THEME IN THE INDIAN DIASPORIC WRITING: A STUDY.” Epitome : International Journal of
Multidisciplinary Research, vol. 7, no. 5, 2021, p. 6.
Kazi, Abdul Sajid. “Evolution of Salman Rushdie as a Novelist in Post Colonial Writing.” Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL), vol. 9,
no. S1, 2021.
Sona, Dr. Shyamli. “Changing Identity in Salman Rushdie's Novel Midnight’s Children.” International Journal of Creative Research Thoughts (IJCRT), vol. 10, no.
8, 2022, p. 7.
SRINIVASA, N. G., and Dr. N H. KALLUR. “History and Fiction in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.” International Journal of Creative Research Thoughts
(IJCRT), vol. 10, no. 10 October 2022, 2022, p. 5.
V, GAYATHRI, and SHOBA C. “IDENTITY CRISIS IN SELECT NOVELS OF SALMAN RUSHDIE.” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE,
LITERATURE AND TRANSLATION STUDIES (IJELR), vol. 4, no. 3, 2017, p. 5.

15. Thank you