"Midnight's Children": Kashmir and the Politics of Identity Author(s): Patrick Colm Hogan Reviewed work(s): Source: Twentieth

Century Literature, Vol. 47, No. 4, Salman Rushdie (Winter, 2001), pp. 510544 Published by: Hofstra University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3175992 . Accessed: 08/04/2012 16:35
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Children: Midnight' Kashmirand the Politicsof Identity

PatrickColm Hogan

Keith Booker has recently drawn attention to a common tenin the interpretive criticism of Salman Rushdie, and indeed of dency much postcolonization literature:the tendency to assume that any deviation from "linear"narrativeis disruptive of colonialist hegemony. Booker rightly points out that this assumption lumps Marxist anticolonial histories into the same category as imperial propaganda("Midnight's Children"). He might have added that it lumps anticolonial postmodern narratives together with any incoherent, rambling, paranoiac, racist history. The problems don't stop there. Humanists write as if the difference between "linear"and "nonlinear" narrative is straightforward.But in fact it is hardly clear what constitutes a linear narrative.Sometimes a "linear" narrative is one in which there is any sort of causal explanation. But by this criterion, all narrativesare linear.Youjust can't have a narrativewithout causal explanation. Sometimes "linear" narratives are ones in which is everything given a causal explanation, while "nonlinear" narrativeshave occurrences that are not explained. This is a reasonable definition. gaps, But it reverses the preceding problem, for by this criterion there are no linear narratives. No story explains everything. There are only degrees of explanatory completeness. Moreover, this definition makes standard political claims about narrative self-evidently implausible. How could it be the case that a story with more unexplained variables-events, situations, actions of characters that are not accounted for but occur as if at random-how could it be that such a story is politically empowering simply by explaining less? This would seem to entail the bizarre idea
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Kashmirand the Politics of Identity Children: Midnight's that one is best able to change a political or economic system when one understands nothing at all about it. Finally,this assumption participates in the absurd rhetorical inflation that has affected humanistic writing in recent years. It seems that we are no longer satisfied with saying that a novel criticizes or analyzes colonialism. Rather, we must say that it "disrupts"the economy of colonialism, or "undermines" hegemony, or "empowers" colonized peoples. In other words, we cannot simply describe the political implications or purposes of a particular literary work. Rather, we must posit an effect-and, indeed, an effect that is vast, revolutionary, transformative,as if the very fact of a story's publication was socially equivalent to a decade of systematic land reform or the establishment of an independent government. I should say at the outset that I have nothing against nonpolitical interpretations of literary works. Human life is vast, multiple, irreducible. Literature is not confined to one part of it. Thus all sorts of analysis, discussion, appreciation, and critique have a place in literary study and in what the Greeks called eudaimonia, human flourishing. But the problem with claims of the sort isolated and criticized by Booker is that they pretend to be political while in fact they occlude many real economic, cultural, governmental, historical, and more generally human issues that are or should be central to political discussion. In short, they usurp the place of politics. Booker suggests that this tendency may be particularly unfortunate in Rushdie's case, for the politics concealed in Rushdie are, effectively, a Cold War politics of anticommunism. It seems to me that Booker somewhat overstates his case. Yes, the communists are treated parodically in Midnight'sChildren-but so is everyone else. Yes, Rushdie is critical of the communist movement-but he also shows considerable sympathy for some aspects of the movement and some of its representatives.Yes,the communists are presented as magicians and illusionists, but they are also "people whose hold on reality was absolute" (476).Yes, Saleem tells us that Picture Singh, the communist leader, was antidemocratic, but Saleem also tells us, "I can say,with utter certainty,that Picture Singh was the greatest man I ever met" (474). Still, even if his claims are somewhat overstated, Booker is right that, in the end, Rushdie does appear to repudiate communism as a real option for India, a genuine possibility for fulfilling the hopes and dreams represented by the 1,001 children of midnight. Does this mean, then, that Rushdie offers no option for the future

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Patrick Colm Hogan of India-or only some sort of mild-mannered liberal humanism that would sweep class stratification under the rug (like the history of the Hummingbird, hero of noncommunalist Muslims, or his assistant Nadir Khan, later Qasim the Red)? There is certainly an element of this in Rushdie's writings. However, I do not believe that this is all there is to Rushdie's politics. Nor do I believe that his dissociation from communism is all there is to his treatment of class. In some ways, the problem here is one of the conceptual grid through which we come to analyze Rushdie's work-and this has ramifications that reach well beyond an understanding of Midnight'sChildren.If we view Rushdie's politics through a schema of liberal democracy and communism, it is clear that Rushdie's leanings are toward liberal democracy. Suppose we expand the problematic to include democracy, party rule (or other forms of oligarchy), socialism, and capitalism. Here matters become less clear. Rushdie clearly favors democracy over oligarchy-but what exactly are his views on the economic system? This lack of clarity may indicate a political problem with Rushdie's work. But it also suggests that perhaps we are asking the wrong sorts of questions about the novel. Perhaps its politics operates most importantly along another axis. It is clear that at least one major concern in Midnight'sChildrenis a particular imagination of Indian nationhood. Specifically, Rushdie has an obvious concern with the way in which the unifying imagination of the modern nation addresses issues of diversity-political, ethnic, religious, or whatever. In Midnight'sChildrenthere are two primary alternatives for this imagination. In the first, the oneness of nationhood is authoritarian-centralized, homogenous, dominated by a single individual, a single party, a single ethnicity. This vision of the nation seeks to eliminate or control diversity and is, in consequence, continually plagued by dissent. It is continually embattled, for it is endlessly challenged by rival authorities, centers, homogeneities. For example, the Hindu nation is disrupted by Muslim and Sikh; the strong central government is undermined by separatism.The alternative to this authoritarian imagination is pluralistic imagination, a view of nationhood not as a place where individual and group diversity are subjugated to absolutism but where national unity provides instead a common ground for multiple forms of democratic participation. Allegorically, these two imaginations are personified in Rushdie's novel as the two primary "children of midnight," the two primary ways of thinking and acting that are born simultaneously

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Kashmir the Politicsof Identity Children: and Midnight's with the new nation:Shiva,whose mighty knees bring all opponentsto kneel, and Saleem,whose capacious,telepathicmind allows a place for all the hopes and dreamsof the new India,all its classesand persuasions, and like all its talentsand ideasand histories,jostling disagreeing so many parliamentary representatives. In part,this instancesRushdie'sliberalhumanism.However,it also raisesa set of political issues surroundingidentity-what it is, how it what its implicationsare for socialand politicallife. Indeed,the operates, politicalcenter of Rushdie'snovel is, I believe,the imaginationand enAnd this actment of differentidentities,even differenttypes of identity. or perhapssubsumesissues of democracyor dictatorpoint supersedes ship,capitalismor communism.One might criticize the politics of the them on theirown But novel,certainly. it is importantfirstto understand terms. To clarifyand develop this point, I shall considerthe beginning of the novel-the widely ignored Kashmirchapters-where Rushdie esthat he will be examinand tablishesthe politicalalternatives structures Rushdie does not begin his in the rest of the novel. Specifically, ing allegorywith the birthof India,the birth of Shivaand Saleem.Nor does he begin with the independencemovement.As Juraganotes, there is an "almostcomplete lack of coverageof the Gandhi-ledNationalistmovement" (180). (In fact,Gandhiis farmore of a presencein the novel than We is commonly recognized. shallreturn to this point later.)Nor does he begin in, say,Bengal,where politicaland literaryresponsesto Euroincludingideasof modern nationhood,developedwith pean modernity, such intensityand consequence.Rushdie gives us only five yearsof the pre-independencestrugglein India,barelycovering the gestationperiof Chilod of the new nation.Thus the continuousnarrative Midnight's drenbegins in 1942. But that is not where the novel begins. Rather,it in Why does Rushdie bebegins a quarterof a centuryearlier, Kashmir. gin the novel with this prologue,only to leap over 23 yearsof important is Of historythereafter? course,everyonerecognizesthat Kashmir a cruand readersfamiliar cial point of conflict between India and Pakistan, ties note his own ancestral to theValley. with Rushdie's familybackground However,the significanceof the opening episode is much deeper-in aboutKashmir for what it suggests the novelas a whole,in what it suggests and in what it suggestsabout the broaderpoliticsof identity. itself,

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and History,myth,metaphor, nothingness

Before going on to examine these suggestions, however, we need to set out a few general characteristics of the novel. First, as is well known, Rushdie's novel is a national allegory.To establish and develop that allegory, Rushdie combines several techniques. Four recur prominently. A thorough analysis of this allegory will, then, typically involve four components parallel to these four techniques. The first component of analysisis inference to literalized idioms bearing on events or persons (in the latter case, personification). This is a standard technique in allegory, evident in authors from Spenser to Walcott. Obvious cases in Rushdie would include the "birth of the nation," the idea that a nation has "many parents,"and that the "heritage" of India is Muslim and Hindu and Christian (thus Saleem's Muslim, Hindu, and Christian parents). Many national allegories are confined largely to techniques of this sort.These allegories are rather broad and, so to speak, conceptual, treating, for example, general alternatives for the future of the nation-such as socialism versus capitalism or tradition versus mois dernity. Rabindranath Tagore's The Home and the World a case in point. The novel does treat specific historical incidents (such as the 1907 Hindu/Muslim riot) in the literal plot. But the allegory itself is primarily a matter of opposing Nikhil's anticommunalism and nonviolence to Sandip's militancy and Hindu chauvinism-two alternative choices facing the nation (in the person of Bimala). Rushdie's allegory, however, is not confined to this technique, for it is historically specific. Thus the second component in any analysis of Rushdie's allegory is the isolation of relevant historical details. Though it may seem that this has been widely recognized, in fact most criticism of the novel barely touches on its often highly precise historical particularity (a particularity that is clear in the treatment of Kashmir).The relative lack of attention to historical detail is in part the result of a strange critical commonplace about the novel-that it undermines traditional notions of historical truth through its self-conscious use of errors. Harrison, for example, disparages anyone who would "painstakingly argue for a consistently analogical allegory" in the novel, for Rushdie is "disrespectfully deconstructive" (53). Reder assertsstill more baldly that "Rushdie believes ... history is the same as'fiction"' (239). It is worth addressing this issue briefly before continuing. Consider

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Kashmir the Politicsof Identity and Children: Midnight's cited by Harrison as an instance of the date of Gandhi'sassassination, deconstructionin the novel. Saleem informs the readerthat "Re-readThe assassination ing my work, I have discoveredan errorin chronology. of MahatmaGandhi occurs, in these pages,on the wrong date" (198). of This is often seen as a sort of postmoderndisruptionor dismissal historical truth. But this seems to be a highly implausibleinterpretation. made an "error," Firstof all, by telling us that he got the date "wrong," to Saleemat least appears be telling us that there is a correctdate,thus a historicalfact.It seems a simple matterof logic. I cannot simultaneously claim that there is no fact about x and that I was mistakenabout x. If Far there is no fact,then I can'tbe mistaken. from undermininghistorical truth,Saleem'sassertionseems to affirmit. Cundy adoptsthe more moderateinterpretation that,for Rushdie, the historicalfact "does not matter"(33). What really mattersis the common belief about history, what people imagine to havehappened.Certainlycommon belief is important.But Rushdie most often indicatesthe importanceof belief in to relation historicalfactsand the way those factshavebeen distortedtothis ward(usuallyratherobjectionable) politicalends.For instance, is one Muslimpoliticswere (alpoint of Rushdie'sinsistencethatnonseparatist killed by the MuslimLeague,then "swept... under the carlegorically) pet" (50), which is to say,deleted from history by those who wish to of presentthe MuslimLeagueas the only legitimaterepresentative MusIn all lims and by those who wish to characterize Muslimsas separatist. as this, the importanceof the common belief is stressedprecasessuch cisely by stressingthe importanceof the facts.In other words,common and belief is characterized criticizedas partof a dominantand distortive The point recursthroughoutthe novel-as when, in Pakistan, ideology. one of the most stifling aspectsof life is the pervasiveuntruth,promi(399). nently includingthe "Divorcebetween news and reality" But this still does not explainRushdie'spurposein "gettingthe date Rushdie has not includassassination. wrong"when recordingGandhi's ed this error simply to affirmthe possibilityof truth while noting the fallibilityof written histories-for, afterall, historiesdon't get the date wrong (why would they?).Rather, Rushdie wishes to expressan attitude towardhistory.Indeed,he has literalizedan idiom in doing this.As Saleemexplains,"inmy India,Gandhiwill continue to die at the wrong time"(198).The point shouldbe clear.In Rushdie'sview,Gandhishould not have died when he did. He should have lived, shapingthe nation's

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Patrick Colm Hogan future. This idea, partially recognized by Goonetilleke (24), is also suggested by Aadam's reaction when Amina hears that Gandhi's assassinwas Hindu and exclaims "Thank God.... It's not a Muslim name!" Aadam's stern response is,"This Godse is nothing to be grateful for!" (169). This brings us to the third technique of Rushdie's allegory, the contrasting of facts with aspirations,ideals, even simple alternatives.As JeanPaul Sartre famously argued, things, matter, and space-what he calls the "in-itself"-are just what they are.They do not lack; they are always a fullness. Persons, in contrast, are the "for-itself" and as such have a relation to their own being and to that of the world. For us, then, the world of life, experience, and action is not occupied only with what is; it is pervaded by what is not. Being, for us, is always given form and point and force by nothingness. A room is filled not only by the people who are there, but by the absence of those we wish were there. History is the same. Each moment of history ousts infinite possibilities,as Stephen Dedalus has it (oyce 21). Any human relation to history, thus any concern about history, any valuing of its study, is a relation guided not only by what history is, but by what it is not. Indeed, in some ways the primary historical focus of Midnight'sChildrenis not on what did happen in the past, but on what did not happen. The very title tells us this. For the children of midnight are 1001 imaginative possibilities that are gradually impossibilized in the actual history of independent India. At any juncture in Rushdie's allegory, then, it is crucial to find out not only what historical particulars did occur and are encoded in the events and persons of the novel, but equally what events did not occur, what particular possibilities were cut short, what nothingness enveloped the thin stratum of the real. Faced with inexorable fact, the continual stifling of possibility, we often respond by telling ourselves stories that manifest and systematize our sense of loss in the past while regenerating hope for the future. The most important stories of this sort are shared by large communities, most often through religion. One way we reconcile ourselves to nothingness is through myth-myths of origin that explain our condition in a way that contingent matters of history cannot; eschatological myths that allow us to imagine that whatever has been lost can, finally, be restored. We imagine both historical reality and historical nothingness by way of myth. We see Providence at work in some social windfall, the hand of God in a disaster; one leader appears to us as Rama, another seems to

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Kashmir the Politicsof Identity and Children: Midnight's rely on the evil ploys of Ravana.Rushdie tacitly recognizedthe point. The fourth crucialtechnique of his allegoryis the use of myth to orient events,to give resonanceto images,places,persons.

Practical identityagainstcategorialidentity: Gandhism localism,nationalism,

his But none of this takesus to Rushdie'spolitics.Again,to understand a somewhatdifwe need to look at Midnight's Children through politics, ferentconceptualgrid from the one that is commonly used.Specifically, the majoropposition in Rushdie'spoliticalthought is not that between or socialismand capitalism even that between democracyand oligarchy. identiit is the oppositionbetween what I have called"practical Rather, it identity"-or, as I phrased in an earlierwork,"practy"and"categorial tical identity"and "reflectiveidentity"(for a furtherdiscussionof these and concepts,see the first chapterand appendixof my Colonialism the is not self-consciousIn introductionto Empire). all likelihood,Rushdie awareof this distinction.However,something along these lines imly his plicitly structures politicalthought in the novel.As we shallsee, this in is unsurprising an Indiancontext,for a divisionof the samesort structuredwhole areasof Gandhi's politics as well. one's self-concept. It is One's categorialidentity is, fundamentally, series of categoriesthat one takesas definitiveof one's the hierarchized self.These categoriesinclude sex, ethnicity, race,religion,and many othand economic classamong them.These categorizations ers-nationality arenot, for the most part,the resultof introspection. Rather,they derive A primarilyfrom explicit or implicit imputation. child cannot look into a mirroror into his or her heartand discoverthat he or she is Indianor Hindu or Muslim.These are categorieshe or she learnsfrom Pakistani, others,directlyor indirectly. A whole series of things go along with categorialidentity.First,the categoriesthat define such identity serve to delimit in- and out-groups, in the technical,social psychologicalsense of these terms.A great deal of researchshows that in-group/out-group divisionsare deeply consequentialfor one's attitudetoward,evaluationof, and responseto other Even trivialgroup divisionspeople (see Duckitt 68-85 and citations). a division based on a digit of one's Social Security Numfor example,

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Patrick Colm Hogan ber-lead people to evaluate members of their in-group more favorably, judge their work more highly, and treat them more generously than members of an out-group (Duckitt 68-69). Put differently, as soon as one accepts a categorization of oneself as Hindu rather than Muslim or as Catholic rather than Protestant, Irish rather than English, one will unconsciously begin to evaluate and respond to people differently,depending on which category defines them. A second important characteristic of categorial identity is that it is vacuous. As the social psychological research indicates, the robust motivational and other effects of categorial identity operate independently of any shared properties those categories might be seen as implying (see especially Duckitt 68-69 and 81). Categorial identification is, first and foremost, identification with a name-Hindu, say,or Muslim. It does not even necessarily entail a set of shared beliefs. It is an easy matter to find self-identified Hindus and self-identified Muslims (for example, mystics of both religions) who share more significant religious beliefs with one another than either shares with many (ritualistic or legalistic) members of"their own" religions. As Nandy et al. point out, "the Pranami sect in Gujarat ... is in many ways closer to Islam than it is to many other sects within Hinduism" (51), while the reverse is true of"many Muslim communities in Rajasthan, Gujarat,and Bengal" (52).Typically,the point does not affect categorial identification. A third significant characteristicis that categorial identity crosses geographical regions and historical epochs. It reaches everyone who falls under the category, wherever and whenever that person might live or have lived. Benedict Anderson has argued influentially that the nation is an imagined community. In fact, the sort of national imagination discussed by Anderson is simply a special case of the imagination required for any categorial identity. For categorial identities all define communities, and they typically do so in ways that necessarily include people who do not and cannot enter into contact with one another. To categorize oneself as Indian involves an imagination of a community of Indians, but to imagine oneself as Muslim or Christian, male or female, white or black or Asian, does also. The last point becomes clearer when we contrast categorial identity with practical identity. Practical identity is the entire complex of habits, expectations, abilities, routines that integrate one's daily activities with those of a community. One's practical identity encompasses everything

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Kashmirand the Politics of Identity Midnight' Children:

from tablemannersand greetingcustomsto unreflectiveexpectationsof how otherswill act in any sort of communalrecreationor labor.Unlike It practical identityis not merelyattributive. is, rather, categorialidentity, It is also farfrom vacuous,for it is a set of concrete, broadlyexperiential. with others.Finally, activeknowledgesthat enableour interactions practical identity is insistentlylocal and proximate.It is a matter of being able to do things with people here and now.This is not to say that it or contradicts necessarily globalrelations thatit cannotbe extendedacross regions.Indeed,many aspectsof practicalidentity are necessarilytransin portable-skills and expectations driving,for example,extend not only a nation but acrossnations.However,even when it is transthroughout ported to anotherregion, practicalidentity alwaysinvolvesnetworksof directinterconnectedness. The politicalsignificanceof categorialidentity-and its complexity, its tendency to generate not only conceptual contradictionbut social Consider one of Rushdie's most detailed conflict-is straightforward. on statements the imaginationof nationalidentity: a nation which had neverpreviouslyexistedwas about to win its us freedom,catapulting into a world which, althoughit had five thousandyearsof history, althoughit had inventedthe game of chessand tradedwith Middle KingdomEgypt,was nevertheless into a mythicalland,a countrywhich would quite imaginary; never exist except by the effortsof a phenomenalcollective will-except in a dreamwe all agreedto dream... India,the new myth-a collectivefiction in which anythingwas possible,a fable rivaledonly by the two other mighty fantasies: money and God. (129) The firstpart of this quote treatsthe imaginationof India,the way that it has been thought into an identity category complete with a history. The part I wish to focus on, however,is the end of the quote. Rushdie names three rival myths:nationhood,money,and God. Though he has not put the point this way-and no doubt he did not self-consciously consider the point in precisely this way-the crucial idea here is that these three terms point to identity categories,specificallythe categories of nation, class,and religion.Rushdie names these categoriesfirst of all because classand religion are two of the most divisive forces in independent India.Theyare rivalsto nationhoodin that they tend to under-

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Patrick Colm Hogan mine or displace nationality as the primary and definitive categorial identity for large numbers of people. For example, people's identifications as Hindu or Muslim are potentially in sharp conflict with their identification as Indian. (A final major force against Indian national unity is regionalism. However, that does not merit separate mention in this passage because regional identification is simply a form of national identification, aligned with a different geography and citizenship.) The political significance of categorial identity is clear in part because we are used to thinking of politics by reference to identity categories anyway. Thus we think of political action as bearing on the revolutionary struggles of a class, the civil rights agitation of a religious minority, and so on. Indeed, in our tacit understanding, standard politics-whether focused on class, nation, religion, sex, race, sexual orientation-are almost invariably a matter of (categorial) identity politics. Practical identity, in contrast, may appear apolitical, a matter of socially inconsequential habits. But this is untrue. Indeed, postcolonization societies present us with a series of nonstandard politics bound up with practical identity.Writers and activists with a political orientation of this sort tend to repudiate identity categories, or at least to subordinate them to cooperative interactions. In keeping with this, they tend to eschew transgeographical imagination, stressing instead local practices. The cooperative movement in Ireland is a good case of this sort, for activists such as Horace Plunkett and AE set out to shape and reorient local, practical identities in such a way as to foster the material well-being of those involved without recourse to national or other identity categories and the antagonisms they entail (Lyons 207-10). This was the impulse behind "constructive swadeshi"-the nonconfrontational fostering of local industry-advocated by Tagore as an alternative to the nationalist, antiBritish (and, in Tagore's view, anti-Muslim) "negative" swadeshi of boycotting foreign goods (Sarkar 32-33). It is the politics implicit in the boiteko and other self-help and cooperative projects of Botswana (Eilerson 122), treated by Bessie Head in A Questionof Powerand When Rain Clouds Gather.It is also to a great extent the politics of anarchosyndicalism and left-wing communism. Perhaps the most famous instance of such local politics of practical identity is Mahatma Gandhi. In the West, we hear of Gandhi primarily as an advocate of nonviolence. However, at the time of India's independence, Gandhi's primary conflict with Nehru concerned the nature of

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Children: Kashmirand the Politics of Identity Midnight's the new nation. As de Bary, Hay, and Qureshi point out, "Nehru's ideal India was a centralized modern state with a planned industrial economy,"while "Gandhi's ideal India was a decentralized family of self-sufficient villages" (343). However, in a way, even this depiction is misleading, for Gandhi would not have seen his localism as primarily "decentralized" and thus defined against a transgeographical nation, understood as primary and definitive. For Gandhi, transgeographical centralism is the oddity; localism is the norm. Thus he wrote that government "control gives rise to fraud, suppression of truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity" (359).When Louis Fischer asked him if"there would ... be a national government" in his perfect India, Gandhi just said "No." Fisher pressed the point, stressing the transgeographical infrastructure of the modern nation: "But surely you need a national administration to direct the railroads,the telegraphs and so on." Gandhi replied, "I would not shed a tear if there were no railroadsin India" (294). Neo-Gandhians, such as Ashis Nandy, have developed an analytic approach to political conflict effectively based on a focus on practical identity (though, like Rushdie, they do not formulate the point in these explicit terms). Thus, in Creatinga Nationality,Nandy and his coauthors argue that nationalist modernism has intensified communalist conflict in India. This seeming paradox makes sense once one recognizes that nationalism and communalism are both products of categorial identification. In contrast, communalist conflict has been curbed only by the local traditions of Hindus and Muslims living in mutual dependence. In other words, it has been curbed by the "normal rhythms of community life" (175), a centuries-old "integration" of "lifestyle, cultural concerns and manners" (181), including "traditional social and cultural ties crossing religious boundaries, as these boundaries are conventionally defined within the modern sector" (22-23). Thus, in many places, "Hindu festivals and and ritualsare inconceivable without Muslim craftspersons" vice versa. For instance, in one area,Muslim "women make the mandatory lac bangles for Hindu married women" (126).As one interviewee, Bhole Singh, puts it, "Why is it that there is no difference between Hindus and Muslims when we work alongside in the fields or when they come to thatch our roofs, but when there is a riot they suddenly become our enemies fit to be killed?" (178). In our terms, a religious riot occurs when categorial identities have become a central motivating force for a wide range of people-due to the transgeographical agitations of sectarian politi-

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Patrick Colm Hogan cians, the general foregrounding of categorial identity in the modern nation, and so on. In contrast, communal farming ("work alongside in the fields") is a perfect instance of the integrated practical identities of ordinary people in local communities-practical identities that once served, and may serve again, as a counterforce to divisive categorial identities. Empirically, the point is well supported. For example, citing social psychological research,Duckitt points out that communal work in egalitarian conditions significantly reduces in-group/out-group division and conflict (144-46, 252, and 258). As we shall see, this view of practical identity is closely related to Rushdie's account of Kashmir.

Rushdie'sGandhianimagination
Before going on to Kashmir, however, we should say something about Rushdie and Gandhism. It is a commonplace of Rushdie criticism that Rushdie paid little attention to Gandhi. Brennan points out that Gandhi's National Movement is "impertinently excised from the narrative outright" (84). This is usually taken to mean that Gandhi is not terribly important for the novel. Indeed, Harrison goes so far as to suggest that "Rushdie ignores Gandhi" because Gandhi was excessively Hindu, and thus objectionable from Rushdie's point of view (15). No doubt there is complexity and ambivalence in Rushdie's attitude toward Gandhi. But it seems unlikely that his main view of Gandhi is critical, for if it were, he would not ignore Gandhi but subject him to the same thorough criticism to which he subjects many other leaders. Moreover, he would not have such an admirable character as Aadam Aziz deeply lament Gandhi's death (169). In fact, Midnight's Children in many ways a Gandhian novel. is In qualifying Rushdie's criticism of communism, I noted above that Rushdie parodies all political alternatives in Midnight'sChildren. But that is not quite true. There is little parody of Gandhi. Indeed, I suspect that Rushdie passed over Gandhi's role in history because the nature of the novel would have forced him to treat that role parodically. He had to leave Gandhi out of the novel in order to allow the narrative to incorporate Gandhism. Goonetilleke is one of the few critics to have recognized the significance of Gandhi for Midnight'sChildren.As he puts it, "The text has it that heroes are a rarity; only Gandhi measures up to one" (32).

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Children: Kashmir the Politicsof Identity and Midnight's We have alreadydiscussedRushdie'sclaim that Gandhi died at the wrong time, with its clearimplicationthat Gandhishould have lived to lead the new nation-presumably in a differentdirectionfrom the one it ultimatelytook.This is farfromthe only point at which Gandhi's presence is palpablein the nothingnessof the novel'shistory.For example,at a crucial point, when the Midnight Children'sConference is disintegrating,Saleemappealsto the other children,urging them to rejectcategorial identity:"Do not permit the endlessdualityof... them-and-us that to come between us!"He cries"passionately" they "mustbe a third (306). Saleem goes on to indicatethat categorialidentity reiprinciple" fies us, reduces our ongoing, multiple,unfixableselfhood to mere objects. He protestsin vain that "people are not things"(307); earlier,he explainedthat"a human being, inside himself,is anythingbut a whole, anythingbut homogeneous;all kinds of everywhichthingarejumbled up inside him, and he is one person one minute and anotherthe next" of (283). Shiva,implicitlyrecognizingthe pervasiveness categorialidenwhat people are in modern society,snortsin disagreement, "Today, tity Saleem feels himself "crumbling"-like is just another kind of thing." India,with its multipleconflictingidentities-and respondsby invoking with Gandhi. the Upanishadicunity of souls, which he tacitlyassociates thirdprinciple,the "hope"offeredby the childrenof midHe namesthis of night:"the greatsoul, otherwiseknown as mahatma, mankind"(307). afterthis, Saleem worries that the childrenhave begun to "disShortly cuss identity"and have chosen to contrastGandhiand Marx (307). On and the next page,he saysthatthe thirdprinciple"is childhood," mourns the fact that "it dies; or rather,it is murdered" Childhood is, of (308). murdered the guidanceand exampleof adults. course,metaphorically by But in light of what just precededthis statement,one might wonder if in this thirdprinciplewas murdered a more particular historicalway and NathuramGodse,whose fanaticismfor Hindu identity led to Ganby dhi'sdeath"atthe wrong time"(198). Of course, Gandhi'sdeath was not the end of Gandhismin India. Bhavehad remarkable successin establishing local GanAcharyaVinobha without violence, antagonism, clashof identities.Sathe dhiansocialism, landownersto leem explainsthat Bhave"hadspent ten yearspersuading donate plots to the poor."JustafterBhave "announcedthat donations Saleem is clipping words from the had passedthe million-acre mark," In newspaper. a pun that is typicalof allegoricaltechnique,in Rushdie

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Patrick Colm Hogan and elsewhere, Saleem explains that J. P.Narayan'sannouncement of"the dedication of his life to Bhave'swork ... gave me my much-sought "WAY" (312). Literally,he is referring only to the word "WAY" appearing in the headline. But it is clear that the ambiguity of the phrase is fully intended by Rushdie, and that Bhave's Gandhian work does provide Saleem with his way (not, perhaps, the way he actually manages to follow, but the ideal, the possibility).1 This is not to say that Rushdie is a full-fledged Gandhian. He is not. Indeed, he seems to recognize that the sort of localism envisioned by Gandhi is no longer possible, that the local has already been taken up into larger, transgeographical, political structures.That transformation is part of modernity and cannot be reversed. Moreover, modernity, as presented in Rushdie's novel, leads inexorably toward a conflict of different categorial identities-national, subnational (regional),religious, economic. The Midnight Children's Conference (MCC) briefly presents a possible solution to all these problems. For what Saleem tries to establish through telepathy is a sort of transgeographical, modern localism. He in effect seeks to reestablish practical identity within the modern context of rival categorial identities. His mind, where all the children meet, becomes the site for a different sort of local, practical engagement. The idea here is not dissimilar to, for example, Donna Haraway's vision of a "cyborg" culture in which a global computerized network links us all in direct, practical ways, mimicking the localism of practical identity and undermining oppressive identity politics. It is also connected with the ideas of Marshall McLuhan, most obviously his insistence that the world was becoming a "global village" (though also his contention that "When our identity is in danger, we feel certain that we have a mandate for war" [McLuhan and Fiore 97]). Indeed, Saleem's telepathy is, in effect, an early form of the very technologies treated by these writers: I heard, at first, a headful of gabbling tongues, like an untuned radio.... By sunrise, I had discovered that the voices could be controlled-I was a radio receiver, and could turn the volume down or up; I could select individual voices; I could even, by an effort of will, switch off my newly-discovered inner ear. (192-93) The chapter that introduces the children through Saleem's mind is entitled "All-India Radio."

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betweenRushdie and these difference However,thereis an important It other writers.The MCC disintegrates. fallsprey to the divisiveidentiIt ty categoriesfor which it was to serve as an alternative. seems that the of subordination practicalidentity to categorialidentity is an inevitable and outcome of modernity, that modernityitselfis inexorable. On the other hand,the triumphof modernityis not all bad.Rushdie does not romanticizethe traditionsof practicalidentity.Quite the contrary.Unlike Gandhi,Rushdie clearly feels that modernity brings open-mindednessand liberality-and materialbenefitssuch as medicine AadamAziz). It is of in (so well represented the character the physician, That is why Rushdie tries to salvagenational and valuable. important, identity,at least in imagination,through the institution of a transgeoidentity,a sort of nationallocalism,in the MCC. practical graphical Indeed,it is worth dwelling on the MCC a little longer,for in the with his podevelopmentof this idea,Rushdie'suse of allegoryinteracts litical aims in particularly complex ways.In general,I believe that allegory is simply a technique Rushdie uses, with no necessarythematic After all,he could have used the same technique to make consequences. differentpoints or other techniquesto make the same points.But here the relationbetween allegoricaltechniqueand politicalthemes is consealquential.In personifyingthe nation,Rushdie is following a standard national which is itselfa standard of more general part legoricalpractice, of the assimilation the nation to a single humanbeing.The metaphorics: is purpose of such an assimilation to give imaginativeunity to a great servesto providea way Personification of diversity placesand individuals. of envisioningthis diversityas one perceptualform, of identifyingwith intentionalagent, it of it as a uniquesubject, understanding as a purposive and so on-all things we cannot do with a great expanseof space and workswell for this purpose,and Personification its unknown inhabitants. for the sorts of categorialidentificationthat go along with it. But its and both democraticpluralism pracseems to contradict very singularity This leads to Rushdie'sfastical identity,which presupposemultiplicity. conceit of the MCC. By placingthe multiplicityinside Saleem's cinating mind, Rushdie tries to reconcile these apparentcontradicto(singular) ries. Moreover,he does this not only to preservethe allegoricaltechHe seeking diversity. is also,and conversely, nique and maintainpractical and therebyoppose to preservesome degree of nationalconnectedness,

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Patrick Colm Hogan the local insularity of practical identities (which all too easily ossify into oppressive rigidity). Nonetheless, despite this partial acceptance of modernity, if I am correct, Rushdie's deepest political commitments set him against categorial identity in its various forms and against the antagonistic and discriminatory distinctions that go along with categorial identities. Indeed, in principle this includes even "hybrid" categorial identities. It is sometimes assumed in postcolonial theory that hybridity resolves problems of identity politics. But this is not true. Briefly, there are three problems with this view. First, many influential discussions of hybridity do not present a clear account of identification-its nature, genesis, function, and so on. In connection with this, hybridity most often lacks the precision and explanatory value of a theoretically rigorous, technical concept. (The notion of hybridity is associated primarily with Homi Bhabha. I have argued elsewhere that Bhabha's work does not in general provide an adequate theoretical foundation for work in postcolonization literature;see my Colonialism25-43 and the introduction to Empire.) Of course, the word hybridityis often used in a perfectly clear way to refer to a mixing of different categories. But this leads to a second problem. Hybridityin this sense simply generates an identity category of the usual sort with all the usual consequences for the formation of in-groups and out-groups. For example, insofar as hybridity refers to so-called hyphenated identities, such as Chinese American, then it simply generates a new categorial identity-Chinese American. The same point applies to the more complex mixes that are taken to constitute national identities, such as American, which is not just English, say, or Anglo-German, but combines Italian, Irish, Spanish, Native American, and so on-all to the point of defining a new categorial identity, American. Indeed, one might reasonably ask if there is any national or even ethnic identity that was not, at one point, recognizably hybrid. Finally, many categorial identities are not open to hybridity anyway. One may have ancestors who were rich and ancestors who were poor, ancestors who were capitalists and ancestors who were workers. But one cannot currently be a hybrid rich-poor or capitalistproletarian. As the mention of class suggests, one result of this strict (if often implicit) opposition to categorial identity is the anticommunism discussed by Booker, for communism stresses class struggle and international proletarian unity. The point is clearest toward the end of the novel when

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Kashmirand the Politics of Identity Children: Midnight's Saleem reflects on Picture Singh's "mime of a rich man refusing to give alms to a beggar":"something in me objected to Picture's portrayal ... of the unrelieved vilenesses of the rich; I found myself thinking,'There is good and bad in all"' (493). Marxists will rightly object that this misunderstands Marxist analysis, which concerns social structure and has nothing to do with the personal morality of the rich or the poor.That is indeed a problem with Rushdie's treatment of class and of socialism. But Rushdie's criticism here cannot simply be dismissed as anticommunism. Categorial identity does give rise to this sort of personal denigration and group opposition, however inconsistent that might be with Marxist theory (as represented, for example, in the dictum that class origin does not determine class stance). If an example is required, one need only cite the Khmer Rouge. Though, asVickery and others have shown, the scale of atrocities was greatly exaggerated in the West, it is still clear that, in Democratic Kampuchea, class was asserted as a categorial identity with a vengeance, in every sense of the word.2 Moreover, as we have been emphasizing, Rushdie's criticism of class identity takes part in a larger criticism of categorial identity in all its forms. For instance, it is precisely this opposition to categorial identity that led him to oppose Indira Gandhi's authoritarian centralization so strongly-for in Rushdie's view, that centralization involved a direct, national intervention in the local, practical identities of ordinary people, most obviously in the sterilization campaign.3 It is also this opposition to categorial identity that led to Rushdie's conflict with a transgeographical, centralizing, authoritarian, categorial Islam. In this way, Rushdie's position is not so much comparable to that of Cold War liberals, such as John Kennedy, as to such writers asJudith Butler. "I'm permanently troubled by identity categories," Butler writes (14), in words that could have been Rushdie's. Such categories are "trouble" (14), "instruments of regulatory regimes" (13). She urges instead the possibility of"resistance to classification and to identity as such" (16). Again, Rushdie brings up these issues most obviously at the beginning of the book, in the chapters on Kashmir.The bulk of the novel clearly focuses on the imagination of nationhood, thus on a particular case of categorial identity, and on the ways that imagination is fissured into antagonistic religions and classes by the nation's two great rivals, money and God. But there is something that precedes the imagination of the nation. The dream of India, or any other country, does not arise

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out of nothing. In part, it is the function of the Kashmirchaptersto outline the transitionto nationalimaginationfrom what went before: This practical identhe local,practicalidentity with its living traditions. was displaced nationalmodernity, it servesnonethelessas one but by tity model for a differentsort of nationalor seminationalconnectedness,a
"third way."

Kashmir: traditionand modernity

From the beginning of the first chapter, generalterms of the Kashthe mir allegory are clear.Kashmiritradition-the complex of habits,bethat identitiesof the people-are liefs,andattitudes makeup the practical Tai the boatman.He is the "tie"that binds the presentto by represented the past,the people to their customsand to one another;and he is the boatmanwho, like Charon,ferriesto and from the land of the ancestral when Taihad been young.He hadbeen dead."Nobody could remember plying this sameboat, standingin the same hunched position,acrossthe Dal and Nageen Lakes.. . forever"(9).Tai himself tellsAadam,"I have watched the mountainsbeing born,"the time of Siva and Parvatiand the Hindu gods;"I have seen Emperorsdie,"Muslim conquerors, perfor Kashmir("Emperor Jehangir... what was the Emperhaps,longing of or'sdyingword-I tell you it was'Kashmir"' [12]-a purveyor Muslim categorialidentity, longing for the Eden of practical identity);"Isaw that Isa,that Christ,when he came to Kashmir" (11).Tai,though now Muslim, does not representonly one religion or one politicalsystem,for he is timeless.Religions and empiresin Kashmir havebeen locatedin time; Tai persiststhroughall of them. It is not that traditionlacksan objective but Traditionfeels eternal,though history, it does lack a subjective history. of course it is not. That is how Tai can be said to precede religion and nationsaremade of historicalstuff; they areself-conempire.In contrast, scious about origins and developments. Rushdie emphasizes,India As had neverexisted"although had five thousand it (129)yearsof history" a historyformedretrospectively the storyof a nationas partof imaginto ining thatnationinto existence. Aadam,the new man, standsin direct opposition to Tai:"Tai-for(124). In keeping with changelessness opposed to Aadam-for-progress" the generaloppositionbetween seeminglyeternaltraditionand the historicizationof modernity and nationhood,Aadamhas two weaknesses,

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Kashmirand the Politics of Identity MidnightsChildren: named by Rushdie on the second page of the text. These are "women and history" (4). History, again, is a weakness because the modern nation is self-consciously historical; moreover, as a political entity rather than a communal system of habit and custom, it is continually subjected to the changing complexes of political and social conditions and crises that define history. Women are a weakness because of Naseem. She is the one woman to whom Aadam is drawn (Aadam is not a Lothario), and allegorically, she is the nation-India, as imagined at a particular historical moment. To say that Aadam has a weakness for women is to say that he has a weakness for the imagined nation. There are many ways in which Rushdie connects Naseem with India. For instance, later in life, she is known as Reverend Mother, her name recalling Mother India, the Bharat-Mata with whom Saleem connects his own "too-many women" (485). Massive,hobbling like the overburdened land she represents, her face is disfigured by two huge moles (41), perhaps suggesting the face of India, disfigured by East and West Pakistan.4But the most striking link between Naseem and Bharat-Mata occurs in the opening chapter of the novel, "The Perforated Sheet."This title refers to the way in which Aadam Aziz first sees Naseem. Aadam, a physician, is called on to examine Naseem but can see her only in patches. He is allowed to view just that part which is ailing, and he views it through a perforated sheet. Aadam's partial and discontinuous views of Naseem mirror anyone's partial and discontinuous views of a nation, for our experience of a nation is necessarily an experience of bits and pieces only; we do not sense the whole directly, but imagine it. As Goontilleke puts it, "Naseem appears to represent Bharat-Mata (Mother India)-that ... can be seen, and understood, only in fragments" (22). In this case, the nation is Bharat-Mata as she came to be imagined early in the century, stitched together from British India and the princely states, prior to the idea of Pakistan,which dates from 1930 (Wolpert 316-17): So gradually Doctor Aziz came to have a picture of Naseem in his mind, a badly-fitting collage of her severally-inspected parts. This phantasm of a partitioned woman began to haunt him, not (23) only in his dreams. Glued together by his imagination. The link with the nation is indicated not only by the parallel to Rushdie's subsequent reference to the "dream" of India but even more by the use of the term partitioned.In a novel about the birth of India, any refer-

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Patrick Colm Hogan ence to partition must suggest what happened in 1947, the division of South Asia into India and Pakistan.Here Naseem, India, is imagined as a whole, not India as opposed to Pakistan, but South Asia in its entirety. She is dreamed of as the whole that will be partitioned. In contrast, Saleem represents India after 1947. It would make no sense to speak of him as being partitioned. He is one result of partition. Even at this point, then, in the tentative, imagined nature of Naseem's unity, the unity of what might be called Greater India, there is a hint of the future partition. In keeping with this last point, Naseem represents two ideas. She is not only India but a particular form of identity politics that takes shape concurrently with the incursion of European culture and modernization. At this level, she represents what I have elsewhere called reactionary traditionalism, a vehement rejection of modernity or westernization through the assertion of tradition as a categorial identity.5 Naseem, the Reverend Mother, is, in this sense, the uncompromising repudiation of the progress allegorized by Aadam. She is the assertion of tradition as a definitive self-concept-thus tradition that is rigid, uncompromising, vehement. (The phenomenon commonly referred to as fundamentalism is a form of such reactionary traditionalism.) She is married to Aadam because modernity and reactionary traditionalism are wedded to one another. The latter is a response to the former. The two are inseparable. When the representational identities of nationhood and the disruptive practices of colonial culture invade and threaten the practical identities of tradition, they invariably give rise to a reaction, a defensive response on the part of those who live that tradition. This response consists in an affirmation of an opposed, antimodern representational identity, a definition of self that is irreconcilable with "progress."It is for this reason that, from the moment Aadam imagines Naseem into a whole, he simultaneously dreams her as a "partitioned woman"-for the conflicting categorial identities that gave rise to partition, especially those of Hindu and Muslim reactionary traditionalism,were a necessary consequence of the initial imagination.6 A social system based on categorial identities almost invariably proliferates such identities, producing more categories and more conflicts. This understanding of Naseem returns us to Aadam. For Aadam too has a dual function. He represents modernity and all that it implies-the imagination of nationhood, with its categorial identity, etc. But at the

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Kashmirand the Politics of Identity Midnight' Children: same time he representsthe condition of people who have moved quickly from tradition to modernity, people whose lives began in the practical identities of a colonized country but who have been thrust suddenly into a different set of expectations, ideas, customs. He does not represent a fully modernized generation but a transitional group. He stands for all those who have adopted modernity only after being acculturated to tradition-those who are, in consequence, displaced from both camps, not fully at home in either, those who suffer from what I have called alienating hybridity (see 17 and 320 of Colonialism;it should be clear that, in my usage, hybridity is not a happy alternative to categorial identity). This condition is best represented by Aadam's relation to religious belief, a central part of any tradition. Right at the beginning of the novel, we learn thatAadam'stime in Germany has left him estrangedfrom the Kashmiri tradition in which he grew to maturity. But it has not made him German: "he was caught in a strange middle ground, trapped between belief and disbelief... knocked forever into that middle place, unable to worship a God in whose existence he could not wholly disbelieve" (6). Unsurprisingly, this internal conflict over religious belief is where Rushdie's use of myth enters most clearly into the allegory.

After the fall Kashmir:

It is, of course, no accident that Rushdie named this alienated character Aadam. For he has modeled him on the first man. Most simply,Aadam Aziz represents one sort of beginning, the beginning of modernity in Kashmir, with its particular forms of categorial identity and particular disruptions of practical identity (we shall turn to the history underlying this connection later). But this is not a simple, or simply positive, beginning. It is, first of all, a loss of God, an alienation that leaves "Permanent alteration: a hole" in Aziz's heart or soul (6). Modernity is a sort of Fall, and tradition, practical identity, parallels all the unself-conscious practices of innocence that are lost in the Fall. Of course, there is nothing really innocent about tradition. Practical identity is almost invariably mixed up with hierarchies of status, economy, and gender; it almost always involves cruelty, hypocrisy, deprivation, pain. Moreover, categorial identity is far from being a uniquely modern phenomenon, as centuries of religious antagonism well attest (and as Rushdie acknowledges, even in the case of Kashmir-for example, when he refers to "SikandarBut-Shikan,

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Patrick Colm Hogan the Iconoclast of Kashmir, who at the end of the fourteenth century destroyed every Hindu temple in theValley" [371]). But once lost, once replaced by a modern and seemingly irrevocable affirmation of categorial identity-nationalism, reactionary traditionalism, etc.-then, in retrospect, tradition appears unself-consciously innocent. More important, there is one way in which premodern Kashmir was Edenic, at least in the common view of the place in the period before and just after partition. I am referring to the relative absence of communalism. Nehru characterized Kashmir as "a mixed but harmonised culture" (vii) with a broad acceptance of all religions, "a relative absence of communal feeling" (viii), which is to say,categorial identity. He went on to note that "Even when, after the Partition of India, terrible occurrences took place in Northern India, Kashmir was by and large free from any major conflict" (ix). P. N. K. Bamzai reports that Gandhi visited Kashmir in July 1947 and "was impressed with the communal harmony," even claiming "that in an India which had become dark all round, Kashmir was the only hope" (669). In keeping with this,Tai, Kashmiri tradition, is killed precisely during the war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir later in 1947. The reason is clear: at that moment the valley entered irrevocably into the modern, historical enmity of nations and their various categorial identities. The analogy between Kashmir and Eden is reinforced by Tai'sviewnot uncommon in the Valley-that Kashmir is the land to which Jesus turned after the events recounted in the Christian Bible. More strikingly, the narrative outcome of the Fall also mimics Biblical and Qur'anic accounts, for Aadam Aziz's fall culminates in his exile from Kashmir,just as the firstAdam's fall is marked by his exile from the Garden. Of course, here as in the story of the Fall, Eden is lost even before this exile. Again like the first Adam, after his fall-after the alienating hybridity produced by his time in Germany-Aadam Aziz's life in the garden is joyless. No longer experiencing the bliss of innocence, he can only "try and recall his childhood springs in Paradise"(5), for that Paradiseis already lost. Aadam Aziz first fully experiences this lapsarian,alienated condition when he bends down to pray one morning and injures his nose. From then on, "he resolved never again to kiss earth for any god or man" (4). In short, at that moment, he engaged in just the sort of defiance that led to primordial exile. Both the original Adam and, even more clearly, the spirits who fell before Aadam, lost God and bliss because they refused

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Kashmirand the Politics of Identity Children: Midnight's

submissionof this sort. Indeed, this particularepisode in the novel is bound up with the Qur'anic story of Iblis. Iblis was a disbelieverand to refusedto be submissive Adam (for example,Ali 2.34) or make obeihusanceto him (Ali 320n861)-Adam here understoodas representing In mankindgenerally. short,he refusedto worship god or man.This is preciselythe refusalof AadamAziz "never ... to kiss earth for any god unbelief of or man"-the lowercase in god suggestingthe disrespectful g Ali Iblis.Indeed,the parallelgoes further. explainsthat Iblisderivesfrom a root signifyingdespair(19n57; this is one of the two editions of the as Verses, noted Qur'anused by Rushdie when he composed The Satanic for in the acknowledgments that book).Aziz teeterson the edge of de"Thisdecision" "made that spairfromthismoment on. Forit wasprecisely a hole in him, a vacancyin a vital inner chamber"(4). Indeed,Aziz finally succumbs to this despairat the time of his death. He returnsto Kashmirand entersa Hindu temple that standsbeside the radiomastthe most ancient traditionof the valleyconjoinedwith the symbol of its . When he dies, his body,like his heart,"shatter[s] . beyond modernity. all hope" (334). But again,the primarymodel for AadamAziz is not Iblis.It is, rather, the first Adam, exiled with his spouse from Eden, just as Aadam Aziz departs with his wife from Kashmir.There is one final point about this parallel that is of crucial importance for what follows. Aadam Aziz's fall and exile strictly fulfill what Allah proclaims in the Qur'an-that the fall of humankind is precisely a fall into enmity (Ali 2.36).When Adam and Eve descend from Eden, they descend into individual and group conflict, as Ali explains (21n64). This is precisely what happens when Aadam Aziz and his Eve, Naseem, leave Kashmir. Immediately they encounter the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.7 It is after this terrible event of history, when the fall is complete, that Aadam Aziz definitively assumes his own categorial and national identity-the massacre"turned me into an Indian," he says (40). The massacre can produce this effect because it was already based on categorial and national identity. Thus the fall into group conflict is a fall from practical to categorial identity. This reference to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre leads us to Rushdie's use of historical particulars in his allegory. However, before going on to this, it is important to note that Naseem fits this use of Qur'anic models as well. Though Naseem's reactionary traditionalismdevelops over the course of the novel, we see it for the first time just before the massa-

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Patrick Colm Hogan cre. Here too Rushdie conjoins the development of reactionary traditionalism and its categorial identity with the development of modern nationalism and its categorial identity. Naseem criticizes Aadam for his "Europe-returned" (32) ideas and vehemently opposes coming out of purdah.Aadam tells her, "Forget about being a good Kashmiri girl. Start thinking about being a modern Indian woman" (33). The difference is clear: a "good Kashmiri girl" is someone who follows communal traditions and a "modern Indian woman" is someone who breaks with local traditions to assert a countertraditional, nationalized identity. It is in response to this incursion of modernity and nationalism that Naseem turns tradition into a categorial identity, one to be asserted rigidly.This too is based on the story of the Fall, for what the Fall produces in Adam and Eve is a sense of shame, so that they must cover their bodies (Ali 7:1923). The point is bound up with Islamic prescriptions about dress. It is precisely these prescriptions that Naseem asserts, in opposition to her husband'smodern views: "You want me to walk naked in front of strange men" (33). Her exaggeration is typical of reactionary traditionalism.

Kashmir: Roads to modernity

The general patterns we have been considering are, again, only a part of Rushdie's allegory.As we have alreadynoted, throughout the novel Rushdie structures his characters'lives by implicit or explicit reference to historical particulars. Aadam'slife coincides almost exactly with what Bamzai in his History of Kashmircalls the "Dawn of Modernism" (623). In this regard,Aadam stands for Kashmir itself, or for the modernizing fraction of the Kashmiri population. Specifically,Aadam's birth and early life coincide with the unofficial but nonetheless real loss of Kashmiri autonomy to Britain and the economic and cultural opening of Kashmir to India and the rest of the world, thus to the transgeographical space of categorial identity. Aadam is born in 1889 or 1890. This is crucial, for it was in 1889 that the Maharaja,Pratap Singh, was forced to abdicate. He was replaced by a "Council of Regency" that was "appointed by the [British] Government of India" and was "subject to the general control of the [British] Resident who was the final referee in all matters" (Bamzai 626). One might reasonably say that modern Kashmir-and thus Aadam Aziz-was born with this abdication. Clearly this was the beginning of a change for Kashmir. Powers of state were largely returned to the ma-

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Kashmir the Politicsof Identity and Children: Midnight's involvednumerousrestricin haraja 1905, but even then this restoration tions and placedultimateauthorityin the handsof the BritishResident. "the 'advice'of the Resident" had to be For instance,constitutionally, "followedwheneveroffered"(630). had This shift in administration numerouspracticalconsequences. "the ImperialGovAs Bamzaiputs it, somewhat prejudicially perhaps, and to ernment ... reducedthe Maharaja a figurehead itselfwielded real the Resident.... The Resident by activelycontrolling powers through Kashmirfrom a medieval to the neartransformed the administration modern age" (631). Severalcrucial changes occurred at this time. For example,in 1889, WalterLawrencebegan the process of Land Settlement in Kashmir. However,internalchanges of this sort were perhaps with the less importantthan the changesthat linked the KashmirValley in outside world.According to Lawrence, 1889, there were no roadsin theValleysuitablefor wheeled vehicles.In 1890, the firstgreatroadwas with Rawalpindi.Because Rawalpindiwas completed,linking Srinagar this a railhead, linked theValleywith the restof India(Bamzai636).Thus could equallybe saidto havebeen born when modern Kashmir/Aadam the valleywas linked with the outsideworld. Indeed,this point is extended by the datingof Aadam's trip to EuHe is gone to Germanyfrom 1910 to 1915. It is in 1915 that he rope. finds himself alienatedfrom Kashmiritradition,split into half modern, That was the yearthat a second The half traditional. year 1915 is crucial. this roadwas established, time linking Srinagar withJammu(637). major This is alsogermaneto Aadam's becomingan Indian.Thefirstroadlinked The second linked it with what was later to become Pakistan. Srinagar with what was later to become India.Telephoneconnections were also set up between Srinagar andJammuduringthis period.Bamzaisumma"now came in "So far living in seclusion,"Kashmiris rizes the results: close and direct contact with the people living in the rest of India"and influx of European... tourists"(637).The relation with an "increasing of this to Aadamis clear. Just as he graduallybecomes a "half-and-halfer"(13),"caughtin a strangemiddle ground"(6), partmodern,parttraJust ditional,so too does Kashmir. as he is increasingly exposed to India and Europe,so too is Kashmir. And, in both cases, 1889 and 1915 are crucialturningpoints. There are other connectionsas well. One resultof opening Kashmir with new illnessesimported to the world was a sharpincreasein disease,

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Patrick Colm Hogan into the Valley from the rest of South Asia (638). Bamzai stresses cholera in particular and points out that there were epidemics in 1892-shortly after the birth ofAadam and modern Kashmir-and then in 1896, 1902, 1906-07, and 1910 (639). This importation of diseases necessitated the development of medical facilities in the Valley,and a number of hospitals were opened over the following years. In other words, medicine was a particularly important issue in Kashmir at the time,Western medicine in particular.Aadam leaves to study medicine in 1910, the year of the last cholera epidemic mentioned by Bamzai. Here too Aadam is becoming modernized in the particularway Kashmir was becoming modernizedfor Kashmir, like Aadam, was acquiring Western medicine during just this time. At a more literal level, the advancement of Aadam's European-style education represents broad trends in then-contemporary Kashmir. Before the 1880s, there were no English schools in the Valley.The Mission School began to flourish at the end of that decade, and the State School took up an English curriculum at the same time. This too roughly coincided with Aadam'sbirth. It is also worth noting that this was the period when mining began in earnest in the Valley. In 1907 the Department of Mining was established. Precious gems played a significant role in this business. For example, in 1907, a Major Anderson began mining sapphires."During the next two years he obtained saphires [sic] to the gross value of Rs. 105,000" (642). These beginnings of industry are also reflected in Midnight'sChildren.Indeed, it is the wealth produced by such developments that allows for Aadam's education or, allegorically, Kashmir's modernization. Here Aadam's mother stands for traditional Kashmir, what has given birth to the modern Kashmir."This mother, who had spent her life housebound" like Kashmir, which had been "living in seclusion" (Bamzai 637), "had suddenly found enormous strength and gone out to run the small gemstone business" (7), much as Kashmir had emerged into contact with the outside world and begun to develop modern industries, including the mining of gemstones. It was this gemstone business"which had put Aadam through medical college" (7), much as this early industrial work in the Valley brought modernity with it, prominently including modern medicine. In keeping with this, when Aadam hits his nose against the ground and vows "never again to kiss earth for any god or man," he sees the blood dripping from his nose as "rubies" (4)-gems once more, the eco-

536

Children: Kashmir the Politicsof Identity and Midnight's nomic means for his modernizationand thus for the loss of tradition that manifests itselfin this abjuringof worship. In some ways,the FirstWorldWarmarksa particular intensification of Kashmir'srelations with the outside world. Kashmir trained and equipped units of the State army for service in France,Palestine,and East Africa;and Raja-later Maharaja-Hari Singh "made a personal donation of Rs. 43 lakhs [4,300,000 rupies]to the War Fund"(Bamzai 648). One obvious resultof this increasingconnectednessto the world outside the Valleyis thatAadamand Kashmirbecome part of India.Indeed, it is just at this time that Aadam'sparentsdie: "By the time the Indian regiments returnedat the end of the war,Doctor Aziz was an and the new,"modorphan"(26).The previousgenerationpassesaway, but equally,that new, "modern"Kashmiris an ern" Kashmirremains; or And of course havingno true heritagefromKashmir Europe. "orphan" Aadamleaves-the modern fractionof the Kashmiripopulationleaves it behind its past and its isolation.Through exile and throughmarriage, is united with greaterIndia. Aadamrepresents But as this indicates, only a fractionof the Kashmiri people.To say that Kashmir was connected with the outside world, was becoming modern, is not to say that every Kashmirior even the Tai were doing so.Tradition, practical identity, the majorityof Kashmiris Boatman still remained.There is a change, however.Tai'sclothing has become "putrescent" (25).With the coming of Aadam,he has decayed; the coming of modernity,Kashmiritraditionhas decayed.Morewith over,he developsa skin disease"akinto that Europeancurse called the King'sEvil" (29).What is this illness that is like the King'sEvil but not identicalwith it? I believe thatwhat afflicted what afflictedKashmir, Tai, evil. was,so to speak,the maharaja's Forduringthe sameperiod in which Aadamwas piecing togetherhis vision of Naseem/India,duringthe time when he was becoming an Indian,a Kashmiriindependencemovement the was developingto oppose the maharaja, British,and their repressive The Amritsar massacre occurredwhen Indiansprotestedthe repolicies. strictionson civil libertiespropagated the Rowlatt Acts.The restricby tions themselvesshould not have surprised Aadam,for civil libertiesin As Kashmirwere severely circumscribed. Bamzai explains,the British "took active steps to preventthe infiltragovernmentand the maharaja tion into the Stateof'seditious'ideasfrom the restof the country"; they did so "by preventingthe formation of any association, political,social

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Patrick Colm Hogan or even religious, and issuing of a paper in the State" (650). Rushdie tells us that Aadam brought back with him from Heidelberg "copies of Vorwarts and Lenin's What Is To Be Done?" (14). Anyone familiar with Kashmir during this period cannot help but be struck by this detail, for the Kashmiri government "would not tolerate the import of even harmless magazines of fiction" (Bamzai 651). Bamzai paints a picture of a Foucaultian panoptical state: "the movements of all visitors of a suspicious nature were closely watched" (651). Sometimes state paranoia was almost comical: "Every Bengali was a suspect" (651). Despite this, "By 1919," when Tai's skin recovered from "the King's Evil" and Aadam left to become an Indian, "the State was thoroughly permeated with the ideas of freedom and self-rule" (652).Tai's recovery is perhaps linked with the beginnings of Kashmiri resistance to colonial/feudal repression. In 1932, with the help of Sir Mohammed Iqbal, Sheikh Abdullah and others formed the anticommunalist Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference (Vashishth 2). (Sheikh Abdullah and the Muslim Conference are, perhaps, one model for Mian Abdullah and the Free Islam Convocation, presented as an anticommunalist alternative to the Muslim League in Rushdie's novel.) Before the end of the decade Sheikh Abdullah and others opened the group to non-Muslims, and it became the National Conference. Its program was one of democratic socialism (Bamzai 664-69). In 1946 it launched the Quit Kashmir movement against the monarchy and its British backers. We could think of the point this way.The new nationalism in Kashmir was, in a sense, the development, the modernization, of Kashmiri tradition. It is, in that way, akin to the Midnight Children's Conference, an alternative modernity. That is why Tai marches to the border in 1947, as India and Pakistan are fighting over Kashmir, and proclaims "Kashmir for Kashmiris" (36). That, Rushdie implies, might have been consistent with Kashmiri tradition.That imagination of Kashmiri nationhood might have avoided the development of communalism and formed a pluralistic nation based on practical identity, escaping the authoritarian categorial identities of reactionary traditionalism,Muslim or Hindu. In any case, whether or not such a society was a real possibility, that is not how things in fact developed. Tai's alternative vision is part of the nothingness that surrounds all the events of the Kashmir chapters. But by the time Tai greets the opposing soldiers with his defiant cry, the autonomous development of Kashmir is no longer possible.The Valley and

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Kashmir the Politicsof Identity and Children: Midnight's its inhabitantshave been bound to the historiesof their two powerful practicalabsence of communalismcannot neighbors.Their traditional, Tai standup againstthe communalhatredof India and Pakistan. is shot dead by the opposing troops.The ties that link modern Kashmirto its past are severed;its traditionsof harmoniousand cooperativepractical identity lie dead on the battlefieldbetween two modern nations with identitiesand authoritarian their antagonistic imaginations. we Rushdie does not continue with the story of Kashmir, Though that followed-a tragedyonly to be expected,givall know the tragedy The death of Tai,of tradition,of practicalidentity en Rushdie'sanalysis. left with its daily life of communalharmony, Kashmirmired in the enidentitiesbasedon nationand religion.Of course mity bredby categorial The situationis, alwayswas,more complicatthis is not the whole story. This conBut this is at leastpart of the story. ed than Rushdie suggests. thattendstoward of an indigenoustradition practical flictbetween identity and harmonization an alien systemof categorialidentitiesthat alignsreligious affiliationwith nationhood in sets of rigid antitheses-Muslim againstIndia-this conflict is no doubt one imagainstHindu, Pakistan portantcauseof the pain and crueltythathavebeen so evident in Kashmir in recentyears. Rushdie returnsbriefly to Kashmirlater in the novel, for Aadam must end his life in the Valleywhere he was born. Like all the other events in this book, Aadam'sdeath is no accident.He has traveledback of one to Kashmir.The Prophet's strand hair,the holiestrelicof the place, Once again, is gone. Some blame India,Hindus.Others blame Pakistan. Kashmiris rent apartby forcesoutside and by the identitiesthose forces both manifestand compel. Everywherethere are"riotsand burningsof cars"(333), and all this misery over one thin hair of a Prophet,insubstantialas the boundarythat dividesone group from another,one identity from another,invisibleas the imaginaryline that breeds enmity in the fallen world.That is when Aadam dies. But he does not die like a person. He dies as a whole society dies, broken up into inimical parts: and "the cracksclaimedhim ... the bones disintegrated, the effect of his a fall-"was to shatterthe rest of his skeleton beyond fall"-yes, again is all hope of repair" (334).So in the end, even modern Kashmir crushed and by the enmities of nationaland communalimagination by history and by the brute force such categorialimaginationcan createor sustain. It fractures along communallines, between the ancient temple and the

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Patrick Colm Hogan modern broadcasting antenna, on a hill that overlooks the anarchy and mourning for a violated Muslim shrine. But the damage is not suffered by Kashmir only. It is suffered by all of India. Here, reading of Aadam's death amid the riots and hatred over a missing relic, we learn why, hundreds of pages earlier,Saleem announced the first crack, the first break in his fantastical, imaginary oneness, the first fissure in the unity of India-why he announced this in the same paragraph where he recounted the murder of Tai and why he said that there, in his "wrist, beneath the skin" the first crack, almost imperceptible, was "like a hair" (36). The fate of Aadam, here as anywhere, is both prologue and warning for the fate of all his children.

Socialismand identity
But after all our talk of categorial and practical identity, one might still ask if any of this truly responds to Booker's objections. When Saleem appeals to "love," to "people-together," and "children-sticking-togetherthrough-thick-and-thin" (307), doesn't this serve simply to maintain his own privilege, the opulence of the few and the misery of the many? Isn't Shiva right when he says that "there is no third principle; there is only money-and-poverty," when he alludes to the famous section of Capital on the fetishism of commodities, saying "look at Birla, and Tata [India's major industrialist families], and all the powerful: they make things. For things, the country is run. For things ... but five hundred million stay hungry.... Today, what people are is just another kind of thing" (307). Perhaps the problem here is that Rushdie is not Gandhian enough. His projection of practical identity onto the transgeographic nation-state via the Midnight Children's Conference displaces not only Gandhi's localism but his socialism as well. From early on, Gandhi insisted that the economic constitution of India and for that matter of the world should be such that no one under it should suffer from want of food and clothing.... And this ideal can be universally realized only if the means of production of the elementary necessaries of life remain in the control of the masses.These should be freely available to all as God's air. (231) Later, in a phrase echoed by Rushdie, Gandhi called for "abolishing the eternal conflict between capitaland labor."But he did not advocate simple

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Kashmirand the Politics of Identity Children: Midnight's

denial of the conflict.This abolition,he explained,"meansthe levelling down of the few rich in whose hands is concentratedthe bulk of the nation'swealth ... and the levelling up of the semi-starvedmillions" (284). In an interview,Gandhiwas asked,"Whatis your programfor the "The His of improvement the lot of the peasantry?" responsewas simple: would take the land.Wewould not have to tell them to take it. peasants would take it."And would the landlordsbe compensated? "No," They he replied(294). Yet, in sayingthis, I feel that there is something unfairabout critiCategoricizing Rushdie for opposing categorialidentity too narrowly. al identity has, after all, been centralto the worst atrocitiesof the last not two centuries, genocide andbloody conquests, to menunderwriting tion economic exploitationand socialoppression shortof massmurjust der. Moreover,Rushdie has had to suffer serious and painful human deprivationfor his commitment to opposing categorialidentity,espean cially that of religion. Finally, emphasison the horrorsof categorial seems misplacedin a treatmentof Indianindependence identity hardly when one recallsthat,over the course of a few weeks in 1947, a million lives were lost becausesome people identifiedthemselvesas Hindu and others identifiedthemselvesas Muslim.Indeed,this new nation,scarred violence of partition,was the world into which Salby the unspeakable man Rushdie was born. Like Saleem,he was handcuffedto this history. the the that Rushdie did underestimate importance, necessity, It appears "the means of production ... in the control of the masses." of putting But his severedistrustof categorialidentity-and his alternative emphafor no less validand salutary that. sis on practical identity-seems

Notes
1. It is importantto note, however,that the messageSaleemcraftsfrom his newspaperclippingsis designedto drawhis mother awayfrom Qasim the Red. WAY"not of improvingthe lives of Bhave'swork providesthe "much-sought but of drawingsupporters awayfrom communism.Indeed,in ordinarypeople one with Booker'sanalysis, could arguethat partof Rushdie'sinterest keeping in Gandhiis simplyas a foil for Marx.Again,the novel-like all things human-is not without ambiguityand ambivalence. 2. For instance,the KhmerRouge allowedfull civic rightsonly to poor and and middle peasants workers,and entirelydenied civic rightsto the bourgeoi-

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Patrick Colm Hogan

sie (Vickery 81).At some places and times, some factions appear to have allowed execution on the basis of class standing alone (25, 98-99); they certainly allowed execution for "refusal to adopt in every way the manners and attitudes of simple peasants" (95). Of course, one should not forget the brutality that inspired this fanaticism in the first place-the brutality of the US bombing and of the indigenous elite. Nonetheless, the case seems to bear out Rushdie's worries about the assertion of class as a categorial identity. 3.The situation may not be as clear as Rushdie indicates. Spear suggests that the problems with the sterilization campaign were not national but local, the central government being blamed "for the excesses of many minor agents and officials" (268). 4.The motif is made explicit for her grandson, Saleem. His teacher,Zagallo, explains that the "stains"on Saleem's face "are Pakistan":"Thees birthmark on the right ear is the EastWing; and thees horrible stained left cheek, the West! .... Pakistan ees a stain on the face of India" (277). 5. I myself would distinguish between modernization and Europeanization (Colonialism11), but Rushdie seems to identify them. This may result in part from the effective dehistoricization of tradition in the novel. 6. It is worth noting, finally, that Naseem is the daughter of Ghani, a landowner, one of the Kashmiri elite, but also "a blind man who claimed to appreciate European paintings" (17)-thus an opportunistic imitator of European fashion. Allegorically, one could say that reactionary traditionalism is the child of opportunistic mimeticism-a common view in postcolonization literature (see chapter 1 of my Colonialism). 7.This massacre is perhaps the most notorious atrocity of British rule in India. Wolpert explains that in response to nationalist agitation against discriminatory laws, "General Dyer banned public gatherings."Then, "upon learning that a meeting was to be held in Jallianwala Bagh ... Dyer marched his Gurkha and Baluchi rifles across the narrow entrance to that otherwise walled field and ordered them to open fire without a word of warning.... Some four hundred Indians were left dead, and twelve hundred wounded"; these included "men, women, and children" (299). An earlier version of one section of this essay was presented at the annual convention of the Association for Asian Studies in 1999. I am very grateful to Ainslie Embree for his comments on that version. I am also very grateful to Sabina Sawhney and Simona Sawhney for insightful comments on a subsequent draft of the entire piece and for their great help at various stages of its editing and publication.

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