Hello everyone!
I am Sandhya Bhut from the Department of English, M. K. Bhavnagar University.
A warm welcome to our Virtual Teacher’s Day Celebration 2026.
Today, I am presenting a contemporary rereading of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children titled “Whose India Is It? Narrative, Religion, Language, and Nation in Midnight’s Children.”
In this video, we will explore how Rushdie’s ideas of identity, hybridity, narrative, language, religion, and nation can be understood in the context of our contemporary world.
So, let us begin with the question: Whose India Is It?
Slide 1 — Introduction: Speaking Script
Let us first begin with Salman Rushdie and his novel Midnight’s Children.
Salman Rushdie is one of the important writers of Indian English literature. His writing often deals with history, identity, migration, language, culture, and politics. One of the interesting features of his writing is that he brings together fact and fiction, history and imagination, and personal experience.
Midnight’s Children was published in 1981 and tells the story of India through the life of Saleem Sinai. Saleem is born exactly at midnight on 15 August 1947, the moment India becomes independent. Because of this, his personal story becomes closely connected with the history of the nation.
What makes the novel special is that Rushdie does not present India only through historical events or political facts. He presents India through memory, storytelling, language, religion, identity, and politics. So, the novel becomes not only the story of one person, but also a way of thinking about the story of a nation.
And this leads us to an important question: if Saleem is telling the story of India, then whose India are we actually seeing?
“With this background in mind, let us now ask an important question: why should we reread a novel written in 1981 from the perspective of 2026?”
Slide 2
Now the question is: why should we re-read Midnight’s Children in 2026?
The novel was published in 1981, in a very different social and political context. Rushdie was writing about postcolonial India and exploring questions of nation, identity, history, memory, and belonging.
But when we come to 2026, our context has changed. We now live in a world of digital culture, social media, AI-generated content, hybrid identities, and a multilingual internet. We also continue to debate questions of religion, politics, identity, and nationhood.
So, when we return to Midnight’s Children today, we can ask new questions of the same text. For example, the novel makes us think about how stories are created, how identities are formed, and how a nation is imagined.
But I am not suggesting that Rushdie predicted the world of 2026. Rather, the text remains the same, but our questions change. And because our questions have changed, the way we read the novel can also change.
Transition to Slide 4
“So, before we explore these contemporary questions, let us briefly return to the world of the novel itself and look at how Saleem’s personal story becomes connected with the story of India.”
Slide 3
Let us now come to Saleem Sinai and his relationship with the nation.
Saleem is born at exactly midnight on 15 August 1947, the moment India becomes independent. Because of this symbolic birth, Rushdie closely connects Saleem’s life with the history of the newly independent nation.
As Saleem grows, his personal experiences become connected with larger historical and political events. His identity, family, memories, migration, religion and language are not separate from the history around him.
So, Saleem becomes more than just an individual character. His personal story becomes a way of looking at the story of India. In this sense, the novel connects personal history with national history.
This is why Midnight’s Children can be discussed as a form of national allegory. Saleem gives us one particular experience of India, rather than one complete or universal version of India.
And this leads us to an important question: Can one person really represent an entire nation?
Or, in other words, if Saleem is telling the story of India, whose India are we actually hearing?
