Salman Rushdie and Indian Historiography
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Salman Rushdie and Indian Historiography Writing the Nation into Being Nicole Weickgenannt Thiara
Nicole Weickgenannt Thiara 2009 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-20548-2 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin's Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-30206-2 ISBN 978-0-230-24441-2 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230244412 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09
For my grandmother Gisela Hotz
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Contents Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 Indian historiography and the nation 6 1. A Biography of the Nation 16 Imagining a nation 17 The mirror of the nation 26 Indira is India 43 2. Wives, Widows, and Witches 56 The nation s script for its middle-class wives 57 The nation at the mercy of its monstrous women 68 The wicked witch of the East 76 3. The New God-and-Mammon India 88 Nationalist élite India 91 Hindu nationalist India 102 Palimpsest India 109 4. Mother India 122 Sacralising the motherland 123 Envisaging the nation in the image of the Mother 137 Corrupting hegemonic images of Bharat Mata 149 5. The Idea of a Hybrid India 158 Macaulay s minutemen 162 The novelistic nation 172 Notes 200 Bibliography 213 Index 225 vii
Acknowledgements I particularly thank Tony Crowley, who read and re-read this book in its former incarnation as a doctoral thesis; I am very grateful for his kind support, thoughtful criticism and his useful Scouse lessons. For their advice and comments on various drafts of the manuscript, I am indebted to Lyn Innes, Anindita Ghosh, John Zavos, Mary Searle-Chatterjee, Berthold Schoene, Ken Hirschkop, Thomas Blom Hansen, Anastasia Valassopoulos, Dalia Said Mostafa, Tilman Frasch and Dietmar Rothermund. For funding my doctoral thesis, I thank the University of Manchester (Lees Fellowship) and the Arts and Humanities Research Board. I am also grateful to the publishing team at Palgrave Macmillan. Some parts of chapters 2, 3 and 4 have been previously published and I am grateful to the editors and publishers for permission to reprint the following material: The Nation s Monstrous Women: Wives, Widows and Witches in Salman Rushdie s Midnight s Children, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 43: 2 (2008); Salman Rushdie s The Moor s Last Sigh: Corrupting Mother India, in (M)Othering the Nation: Constructing and Resisting Regional and National Allegories Through the Maternal Body, edited by Lisa Bernstein (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008); Salman Rushdie s The Moor s Last Sigh: Hindu Nationalism, Democracy and the new god-and-mammon India, The Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies 14: 2 (2007). I owe great thanks to my family and friends for their love and support. In particular, I thank my parents, Angela and Winfried, and my brothers, Daniel and Dominik, and their mother Reinhilde. Many thanks go to Traveen for his kindness and love. viii