Film Screening—Deepa Mehta's Midnight's Children

Film Screening: Deepa Mehta's 

Midnight's Children

This blog is part of task given by Dr. Dilip Barad. It is about the film Midnight’s Children directed by Deepa Mehta, based on the novel by Salman Rushdie.For further information Click Here.

Pre-viewing Activities:

1. Who narrates history  he victors or the marginalized? How does this relate to personal identity?

Historically, official narratives are shaped by the victors those in political, military, or cultural power which often erases or distorts the experiences of marginalized groups. In Midnight’s Children, Saleem Sinai offers an alternative “subaltern” perspective, blending his personal memories with national events, thereby resisting the singular narrative of the victors. This intertwining of the personal and political shows that personal identity is deeply influenced by which version of history one inherits or chooses to tell.

2. What makes a nation? Is it geography, governance, culture, or memory?

A nation is not just a fixed territory or a political system; it’s a shared (and contested) construct made of collective memory, culture, myths, and imagined belonging (Benedict Anderson’s “imagined communities”). In Midnight’s Children, the idea of India emerges as fragmented shaped by Partition, shifting borders, and diverse cultural memories suggesting that nations are fluid, hybrid, and constantly redefined by those who live within them.

3. Can language be colonized or decolonized? Think about English in India.

Language can be a tool of colonization English in India was introduced as part of the British imperial project to control education and administration. However, as Rushdie demonstrates through his “chutnified” English, it can be decolonized by infusing it with Indian idioms, rhythms, and cultural references, turning it into a vehicle for postcolonial expression rather than oppression. This transformation challenges the idea of linguistic purity and reclaims English as an Indian language.

Background Reading / Preparation Assign or recommend brief reading on these key postcolonial concepts:

Hybridity:

Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, Chapter: “Signs Taken for Wonders”

Bhabha explores cultural hybridity as the “Third Space” where new identities form through negotiation between colonizer and colonized, challenging binary oppositions.

Nation as a Eurocentric Idea:

Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments

Chatterjee critiques Western models of nationalism and shows how Indian nationalism is shaped differently, emphasizing cultural and historical fragments rather than a unified nation-state.

Chutnification of English:

Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, especially the essay “Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist”

Rushdie discusses the transformation and subversion of English in postcolonial contexts, where English is “spiced” and localized, reflecting hybrid cultural identities.

Film Adaptation & Voice:

Ana Cristina Mendes & Joel Kuortti, “Padma or No Padma: Audience in the Adaptations of Midnight’s Children” (2016)

This article analyzes how film adaptations negotiate narrative voice and audience expectations, highlighting challenges in adapting complex postcolonial texts like Midnight’s Children.

While-Watching Activities:

1. Opening Scene Nation and Identity:

In the opening scene, Saleem Sinai’s narration immediately conflates personal identity with the nation’s identity. Saleem is born at the exact moment of India’s independence, symbolizing how his life is inseparable from the fate of the nation. His identity is portrayed as a microcosm of India’s fragmented, hybrid nature where individual and collective histories intersect. This blending highlights how personal and national identities are deeply intertwined in postcolonial contexts.

2. Saleem & Shiva’s Birth Switch Hybridized Identities:

The birth switch between Saleem and Shiva symbolizes the hybridization of identities in postcolonial India. Biologically, Saleem and Shiva come from different religious and social backgrounds (Muslim and Hindu), but their swapped identities complicate clear binaries. Socially and politically, this switch represents the confusion and dislocation many Indians experienced after Partition and independence where identity is fluid, hybrid, and constantly negotiated rather than fixed.

3. Saleem’s Narration Trustworthiness and Metafiction:

Saleem as a narrator is both unreliable and self-aware, making the narration metafictional. He frequently admits to memory lapses and biases, reminding viewers that history is subjective and constructed. This narrative technique challenges the audience to question the authenticity of historical narratives and consider how personal storytelling shapes our understanding of the past. The metafictional voice underlines the theme that history is often a mixture of fact and fiction.

4. Emergency Period Depiction Democracy and Freedom:

The film’s portrayal of the Emergency period critiques the state of democracy in post-independence India. It depicts the suspension of civil liberties, censorship, and authoritarian governance, suggesting that freedom is fragile and easily compromised. This period reveals the tensions between the ideal of democratic independence and the political realities of power struggles, thus complicating the narrative of a free and united nation.

5. Use of English/Hindi/Urdu Linguistic Identity:

The film mixes English, Hindi, and Urdu, often blending them within the same dialogue or scene. This linguistic hybridity reflects the postcolonial reality where English is both a colonial legacy and a tool for expression and identity formation. The subversion and “chutnification” of English through code-switching and cultural references challenge the dominance of “standard” English and assert a localized, hybrid linguistic identity.

Post-Watching Activities:

• Group Discussion: 

Group - 2 Narrating the Nation:

• Explore how Midnight’s Children rewrites national history through personal narrative. 

• Discuss the critique of Eurocentric nationhood with its focus on linear progress, territorial integrity, and binary identities (Hindu/Muslim, colonizer/colonized). 

• Engage with Partha Chatterjee’s argument that nationalism in India diverged from Western models. 

Activity:

 

Create a timeline juxtaposing historical events (e.g., Partition, Emergency) with Saleem’s personal journey. 

Reflect: Is the idea of “India” coherent in the film or is it fragmented?

1. How Midnight’s Children Rewrites National History Through Personal Narrative.

Midnight’s Children uses Saleem Sinai’s life story as a metaphor for the story of India itself. Instead of a straightforward, official history, the film blends the personal and political, showing how historical events impact individual lives in complex, often contradictory ways. Saleem’s memories and experiences serve as a counter-narrative to dominant histories, emphasizing the subjective nature of national history. This personal approach reveals the fragmentation and plurality of India’s identity, highlighting that the nation is not a single story but many overlapping narratives.

2. Critique of Eurocentric Nationhood:

The film critiques the Eurocentric notion of the nation that assumes a linear progression towards a unified, stable identity based on territorial borders and binary oppositions like Hindu/Muslim or colonizer/colonized. Saleem’s birth at the moment of independence and his mixed heritage symbolize the failure of these neat binaries to capture India’s complex reality. The narrative exposes how Partition violently disrupted the idea of a unified nation and how ongoing communal tensions challenge any simplistic notion of national unity.

3. Partha Chatterjee’s Argument on Indian Nationalism:

According to Partha Chatterjee, Indian nationalism diverged from Western models because it had to negotiate colonial legacies and multiple cultural identities. The film reflects this divergence by showing India as a “nation of fragments,” where cultural, religious, and linguistic diversity complicate the Western idea of a nation-state founded on homogeneity and sovereignty. Midnight’s Children embodies this fragmented nationalism by presenting a multi-voiced, non-linear history.

4. Timeline Activity: Historical Events vs. Saleem’s Journey:

• Historical Event Saleem’s Personal Experience:

1947: India’s Independence: 

Saleem’s birth coincides with independence, symbolizing the birth of a new nation and identity.

1947: Partition of India:

The chaos and violence mirror Saleem’s own dislocated identity and family separation.

1975-77: The Emergency:

Period Saleem experiences political repression, reflecting the country’s democratic crisis.

Post-Emergency:

India Saleem’s fragmented identity parallels the ongoing challenges India faces in defining itself.

5. Reflection: Is the Idea of “India” Coherent or Fragmented?

The film presents India as inherently fragmented rather than coherent. Through Saleem’s personal narrative and the historical backdrop, Midnight’s Children shows the nation as a site of multiple, often conflicting identities and stories. The fractures of Partition, linguistic and religious diversity, and political upheaval challenge the idea of a singular, unified India. Instead, the film suggests that India’s identity is fluid, contested, and made up of many overlapping fragments.

Creative Task:

• Take a paragragh from Rusdie's prose or dialogue from the film and analyze how he "chutnifies" English.

• Translate it into standard English, and than reflect on what is lost.

Paragraph:

The house was opulent but badly lit. Ghani was a widower and the servants clearly took advantage. There were cobwebs in comers and layers of dust on ledges. They walked down a long corridor; one of the doors was ajar and through it Aziz saw a room in a state of violent disorder. This glimpse, connected with a glint of light in Ghani's dark glasses, suddenly informed Aziz that the landowner was blind. This aggravated his sense of unease: a blind man who claimed to appreciate European paintings? He was, also, impressed, because Ghani hadn't bumped into anything. . . they halted outside a thick teak door. Ghani said, 'Wait here two moments,' and went into the room behind the door.

Standard English:

The house was grand but poorly lit. Ghani was a widower, and the servants clearly took advantage of him. There were cobwebs in the corners and thick layers of dust on the shelves. They walked down a long hallway; one of the doors was open, and through it Aziz saw a room in complete chaos. This sight, along with a flash of light reflected from Ghani’s dark glasses, suddenly made Aziz realize that Ghani was blind. This increased Aziz’s discomfort: a blind man who claimed to appreciate European paintings? Aziz was also impressed because Ghani hadn’t bumped into anything. They stopped outside a heavy teak door. Ghani said, “Wait here for a moment,” and went into the room behind the door.

Refelection:

Translating the passage into standard English makes it clearer but loses the original’s rich cultural tone, vivid imagery, and subtle narrative style. The unique voice and emotional depth key to Rushdie’s “chutnified” language become more plain and less engaging, reducing the texture and flavor that give the story its distinct identity.

• Written reflection : 

Write a 500-700 word answering. What does it mean to belong to a postcolonial nation that speaks in a colonizer's tongue and carries the burden of fractured identities? 

Use Midnight's Children to support your view.

Belonging to a Postcolonial Nation Speaking a Colonizer’s Tongue and Bearing Fractured Identities:

Belonging to a postcolonial nation that speaks in the language of its former colonizer is a complex and often paradoxical experience. It involves navigating fractured identities shaped by historical trauma, cultural hybridity, and the ongoing negotiation between indigenous heritage and imposed colonial legacies. Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children provides a profound exploration of these themes through its narrative structure, characters, and stylistic innovation. The novel and its film adaptation by Deepa Mehta illuminates how the postcolonial subject must reconcile a fragmented selfhood and a hybrid national identity, often expressed through the colonizer’s tongue, English, which itself undergoes a process of “chutnification.”

To belong in such a postcolonial nation means living at the crossroads of multiple, often conflicting identities. Saleem Sinai, the protagonist of Midnight’s Children, is born at the exact moment India gains independence, symbolizing the birth of the new nation. Yet, his personal history is deeply entwined with India’s political upheavals, such as Partition and the Emergency. Saleem’s mixed religious heritage, his switched identity with Shiva at birth, and his fragmented memories mirror the fractured nature of the postcolonial nation itself one that cannot be neatly categorized or understood through binary oppositions like colonizer/colonized or Hindu/Muslim.

Saleem’s story illustrates Homi Bhabha’s concept of hybridity, where postcolonial identity is neither purely native nor wholly colonial but exists in a “Third Space” of negotiation and transformation. This hybridity, rather than being a source of confusion, becomes a space of possibility where new cultural expressions emerge. Saleem’s narrative voice simultaneously personal and national blurs boundaries, challenging fixed notions of identity and history. His use of English, infused with Indian idioms, rhythms, and languages like Hindi and Urdu, reflects Salman Rushdie’s deliberate subversion of the colonizer’s language. This linguistic mixing, or “chutnification,” signals a creative appropriation that destabilizes English as a purely colonial instrument and reclaims it as a tool for articulating Indian experiences.

However, speaking the colonizer’s tongue is not without its burdens. English carries the weight of colonial domination, alienation, and the erasure of indigenous languages and cultures. In Midnight’s Children, this is evident in the tension between the desire to assert a unique national identity and the reality of linguistic and cultural imperialism. The colonized subject often experiences a sense of displacement a feeling of being caught between worlds. This linguistic inheritance can fragment personal and collective identity, as individuals struggle to reconcile their rootedness in local traditions with the globalized, Westernized frameworks imposed by colonial history.

Partha Chatterjee’s critique of Eurocentric nationalism, as reflected in Midnight’s Children, further highlights the fractured nature of postcolonial nationhood. India’s nationalist movement diverged from Western models of linear progress and homogenous identity, instead embodying a plural, fragmented reality marked by religious, linguistic, and cultural diversity. Rushdie’s narrative challenges Eurocentric histories by presenting India as a mosaic of contested memories, multiple voices, and unresolved contradictions. The nation, like Saleem, is both whole and broken an entity continuously remade through stories and struggles.

Ultimately, belonging to such a postcolonial nation entails embracing complexity and ambiguity. It means recognizing that identity is not fixed or singular but layered, fluid, and hybrid. The use of English, once a symbol of colonial power, can be transformed into a vehicle of resistance and creativity, enabling postcolonial subjects to tell their own stories on their own terms. Through Midnight’s Children, Rushdie shows that fractured identities and contested histories are not just burdens to bear but also sites of empowerment where new forms of belonging and self-expression can emerge.

In conclusion, Midnight’s Children vividly encapsulates what it means to belong to a postcolonial nation speaking in a colonizer’s tongue and carrying fractured identities. It portrays the postcolonial condition as one of negotiation between past and present, self and nation, colonizer and colonized. This condition, while fraught with challenges, is also fertile ground for cultural hybridity, linguistic innovation, and reimagined national narratives. Through Saleem Sinai’s story, we come to understand that belonging in a postcolonial world involves embracing the fragmented, hybrid nature of identity and language, and finding creative ways to articulate the self within the complex legacy of colonialism.

References :-

- Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.

- Chatterjee, Partha. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton University Press, 1993.

- Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. Routledge, 2006.

- Mehta, Deepa, director. Midnight’s Children. David Hamilton Productions, 2012.

- Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. Jonathan Cape, 1981.

Thank You