Abstract
[Extract] The 1980s witnessed a second coming for the Indian novel in English. Its messiah seems to have been Salman Rushdie. The appearance of Midnight’s Children (1981) brought about a renaissance in Indian writing in English which has outdone that of the 1930s. Its influence, acknowledged by critics and novelists alike, has been apparent in numerous ways: the appearance of a certain postmodern playfulness, the turn to history, a new exuberance of language, the reinvention of allegory, the sexual frankness, even the prominent references to Bollywood, all seem to owe something to Rushdie’s novel... what is the India that is writing these texts? Various economic and social pressures have led to the end of the so-called Nehruvite consensus in India. The idea of ‘unity within’ (Boehmer, 1995: 191)--so central to the years of nationalist struggle and the building of the new nation state--has been displaced by an urgent need to question the nature of that unity. The issue of imagining the nation, the issue of the fate of the children of the midnight hour of independence, has been a pressing one throughout India of late. It is an issue which has been debated in all languages. The novels in English which are the subject of this essay participate in this larger debate. If Rushdie ushered in a new era of Indian writing in English, it has to be acknowledged that he was more a sign of the times than their creator.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 127-141 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Postcolonial Studies |
| Volume | 1 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1998 |
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