Portrayal of History and Politics in the Novels of Salman Rushdie

This paper presents the portrayal of history and literature in the novels of Salman Rushdie. His three novels Midnight's Children, Shame and The Moor's Last Sigh are dealt with. Through an encapsulation of the experiences of three generations of the Sinai family, the narrative of Midnight's Children moves through three different phases of the country-pre-Independence, Partition and the post-Independence. The latter part of the novel deals with tumultuous events of 1971 War and the creation of Bangladesh, and the controversial period of Mrs. Gandhi's rule. Shame represents Indo-Pak war from the other side of the Indian border. Here the shameful aspects of the social, political and cultural scene are crystallized in the lives and activities of its two prominent leaders. The Moor's Last Sigh brings Midnight's Children'spolitics up to date. While re-affirming the Nehruvian idea of India as secular democracy, it moves past the crisis of, governance of the 19 75–77 Emergency and the ideological crisis of the 1980s and 1990s.