The Idea of Nation in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

Abstract

The article discusses the fluid nationalism Rushdie depicts in this novel. Rushdie does not just advocate a fluid nationalism, which he considers an imaginary boundary, but also a culture of hybridity, exemplified by his character, Saleem Sinai, who is a bit of this and a bit of that. He often claims he is disintegrating into parts, indicating that the nation is not a homogeneous entity. Through his characters, Rushdie depicts the prospects for the country achieving independence and the challenges during the Emergency. He also does not fail to mention the challenges to the nation when the optimism disease gradually disappeared from the scene after the assassination of Miah Abdullah, the Hummingbird. He borrows Homi K. Bhabha, Timothy Brennan, and Benedict Anderson’s ideas of nation and national belonging, as well as Salman Rushdie’s rich non-fictional repository, to delineate the true meaning of a hybrid existence.