Rushdie Midnight's Children and representation

Hello, it's Michael.

I thought that Rushdie's use of a novel to try and document India's independence and subsequent territorial struggles was interesting - he uses what is a traditionally Western literary form and applies it to his homeland. This places the novel slightly uneasily between the colonialist British and the indigenous Indians.

I thought the opening of the novel contained a symbolic representation of the differing perceptions between Indian and European (specifically British) perceptions of the world, and the novel.

...My grandfather peered around the room. 'But where is she Ghani Shabi?' he blurted out finally. The lady wrestlers adopted supercilious expressions and, it seemed to him, tightened their musculatures, just in case he intended to say something fancy.

'Ah, I see your confusion,' Ghani said, his poisonous smile broadening, 'You Europe-returned chappies forget certain things. Doctor Sahib, my daughter is a decent girl, it goes without saying. She does not flaunt her body under the noses of strange men. You will understand that you cannot be permitted to see her, no, not in any circumstances; accordingly I have required her to be positioned behind that sheet. She stands there, like a good girl.'

A frantic note had crept into Doctor Aziz's voice. 'Ghanis Sahib tell me how I am to examine her without looking at her?'

'You will kindly specify which portion ofmy daughter it is necessary to inspect. I will then issue her with my instructions to place the required segment against that hole which you see there...'

(pg. 22-23 Vintage edition),bold added by me

The woman behind the sheet has become representative for a moment of India. Visitors, and people who have not been raised in the country, are unable to perceive more than partial, and momentary glimpses of this country at a time, prevented by both their own cultural impediments and the intransigence of the indigenous population. This is ironic considering Rushdie's desire to do justice to his country in the scope of the novel.

What it also reminded by of was Plato's parable of the Cave. Although the doctor can be certain of what body parts he is gazing upon, unlike the chained humans in the parable, it does raise the question of what we are being authorised to see, and how we could be potentially misled.