India In Rushdie’s Eyes

Salman Rushdie is one of the most important contemporary Anglophone writers worldwide.His most renowned work,Midnight’s Children,aims to present the reality of India in his understanding.Based on Imagology,this thesis addresses three questions concerning the images of India in Midnight’s Children: Firstly,what kind of images of India does the novel establish? Moreover,what are the historical and sociological contexts behind those images and what is the significance of depicting them? Thirdly,how are the images related to Rushdie’s identity as a diasporic writer?This thesis argues that Rushdie depicts three major images of India in Midnight’s Children after careful researches on the English social imagination about India as well as the Indian colonial history,the development of the images of Indian women,and the social and cultural characteristics of India presented in the novel.To begin with,India is “A Land of Turbulence” owing to the subversion of the “utopia” stereotype and the disclosure of the grave danger brought about by the English colonialism.Furthermore,patriarchal India declines and the power of women emerges in India.Through the depiction of powerful and independent Indian women,India is presented as “A Society Dominated by Women”.Finally,Rushdie draws an analogy between“chutneys” and the hybridity of India.India is delineated as “A Hybrid Place” through the revelation of the intermingling of West and the East and the “hierarchical relation”between the rich and the poor.Those images are deeply affected by Rushdie’s hybrid cultural background.Rushdie refuses to follow the stereotypes that prevail in English social imagination and Indian nationalist discourse for a long time;rather,he inherits and deconstructs the Indian and English literary and cultural legacies to create an India that is new to the readers.Rushdie contemplates on his own identity as a diaspora writer when molding the images of India in this novel.He seeks a cultural reconciliation between the East and the West and endeavors to justify the writing of diasporic writers.