Myth and meaning in Salman Rushdie's novels: Hindu mythology in 'Midnight's Children' and 'The Moor's Last Sigh'

In his novels on India, Rushdie finds it necessary to employ the mythical mode which accommodates the deeply religious as well as the secular side of the nation. Especially in Midnight's Children and The Moor's Last Sigh, the Hindu gods dance through his pages, taking on the mythic symbolism of the Vedas as well as the political symbolism which the postcolonial nation's many warring factors have chosen to attribute to them, Rushdie attempts in his novels to examine these symbolisms and in the process uncover the motives which lie behind them.; Some of the issues which postcolonial studies have addressed are the role of nationalism, the doubly marginalized status of postcolonial women, and the need to reclaim lost or submerged identities through postcolonial literature. These are precisely the issues Rushdie addresses in his novels about India and Pakistan. Rushdie himself is driven by the need to uncover and expose the barriers to true freedom and individual liberty. According to him, ignorance, religious fundamentalism, and nationalism are the primary causes for division and strife. He seeks in his novels to portray the ills that such forces breed in society.; Rushdie goes beyond postcolonialism. to a stage where even national boundaries cease to exist. His protagonists aim at a world-view that encompasses all nations, all creeds and all languages. In Midnight's Children and The Moor's Last Sigh, both novels about the emergence of postcolonial India, Rushdie uses mythic archetypes, epic narrative structure, and the sacred nature of author and word to create his own rendering, in "brilliant kingfisher colors," of the world as he perceives it and the ideal world as he envisions it might be.