Thinking Activity : Imaginary Homelands: Selected Essays: Salman Rushdie.

Thinking Activity : Imaginary Homelands: Selected Essays: Salman Rushdie

Hello readers!

Here is my task on thinking Activity : Imaginary Homelands, Selected Essays by Salman Rushdie. 

We have virtual guest lecture by Prof. Balaji Ranganathan sir on the Postcolonial studies were , we have learnt so many things about Postcolonial studies by Balaji sir. He had done a very good studies in Comparative Psychoanalytical studies etc

It was organised by Dilip Barad sir, head of English Department. Balaji Ranganathan and Dilip Barad sir gave very clear concepts about Essays. 

Salman Rushdie :

Salman Rushdie is the most controversial writer among Indian writers in English. His book published under the title “Imaginary Homeland” is the collection of the essay written between 1981 and 1992. All the essays are based on Salman Rushdie’s experience of the contemporary time scenario. This book is the collection of the controversial issues of the decade. In those days Indira Gandhi was the prime minister of India. 

Salman Rushdie's Essays :

1 ) Imaginary Homelands 

2 ) Attenborough' s Gandhi

3 ) Commonwealth Literature Does not Exist

4 ) New Empire within Britain

5 ) On Palestine

# Imaginary Homelands: 

The book ‘Imaginary Homelands’ is divided into six sections. 

1) Midnight’s children.

2) Politics of India and Pakistan.

3) Indo-Anglian literature.

4) Movie and Television.

5) Experience of migrants, -Indian migrants to Britain. 

6) Thatcher/ flout election- question of Palestine.

Imaginary Homelands: 

This essay was written after the publication of Midnight's Children. This never was well responded in western countries but, in Indian it was rejected by Indians, and it was a request from a diasporic writer to the country of his origin to accept him.

It is written out of anguish to go to the roots of one’s origin. The desire of belonging to somewhere, it is the desire of an individual to claim a country as his/her homeland.  So, let’s analyze the essay in detail.

Problems with ‘Midnight’s Children’ :

Rushdie starts his essay with a photograph which was taken in 1946 before his birth in India. Photo talking about loss of time, loss of the past. This photo was an inspiration for the novel ‘Midnight’s Children’. When he was writing ‘Midnight’s Children’ he was very far from India, it was India from a macrocosm view. 

He says. “it may be that writers in positions of exiles or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss. The physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will in short create fiction, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homeland, India in mind.”

Diaspora : 

Dreams of Consciousness.

‘Imaginary Homelands’ is all about the feeling of belonging nowhere.  The Feeling of insecurity always remains there in his mind which got reflected in his work. His life experience as always, a member of marginalized group, member of Indian Muslim family in Bombay, then as Pakistani, and as present time as British Asian. Thus, there is not a fixed identity/root which he can claim. Even in Britain he is not accepted as a member of that country. His experience is no better as he wrote in his essay titled ‘New Empire Within New Britain.’

# Attenborough' s Gandhi :

Attenborough’s Gandhi - essay deals with the Indian leader called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Looking at the Postcolonial way. In this essay he deconstructs the movie ‘Gandhi’ by Attenborough. Ben kinglsy has played the role of Gandhiji in this movie. Beginning of the essay he said that “ Deification is an Indian disease”. In India , Gandhi is higher than anyone but he has a question (Postcolonial mind always with questions)which he asked to people many a time  – “ why should American academy wish to help him by offering in temple eight glittering statuettes to a film.”in answer Rushdie might be viewing Gandhi as a mystical  person. India is the fountain head of spirituality. Gandhi is a little father and spiritual Gandhi is the famous figure and leader of India. Here in the movie Attenborough has compared Gandhi with Christ. He also said that anything can be achieved through submission, self-sacrifice, and Non-violence.

Rushdie also used a picture of Gandhi from the movie in which he wears white clothes that is his identity.

In the movie , Attenborough didn’t include speech of Nathuram Godse Because  he knows that no one like to watch or listen Nathuram Godse as he has killed ‘ Mahatma’ in that case Nathurama villain and if he has included this portion into movie than this movie might not be selected as a Oscar winning movie. Rushdie says that he was not 'nuts'.

Thus Rushdie gives his reviews about Attenborough’s film and at the end ,he writes a very significant line.

“Rich men like emperors, have always had a weakness for tame holy men, for saints”

# Commonwealth Literature Does not Exist :

Commonwealth literature concept came into practice in the mid-twentieth century, there are various factors that were responsible for its growth in the nineteenth century.

an important aspect of so-called Commonwealth literature may be that it is written in one place by people from another place. Whereas an earlier generation of writers settled in Britain, many contemporary authors have chosen to live in Canada or the United States.

Rushdie objected to the new category of Commonwealth. A respectable literary piece, according to Rushdie, must meet the demands of authenticity. Authenticity demands that sources, forms, style, language and symbol all derive from a supposedly homogenous and unbroken tradition. Rushdie says that English is not a debatable topic in the commonwealth, there are also other languages like hindi.

Commonwealth literature is therefore an unreliable face of historicity. It is neither founded on one form nor guided by an encompassing set of norms. Indeed, when one talks of Commonwealth literature, one needs to look beyond the borders of the nation-state  to the land of the West. In short, according to Rushdie, Commonwealth literature is an encompassing myth.

# New Empire within Britain:

In this essay Rushdie discusses the prime quandary of Britain is racism and the problems of immigrants among whites. How they suffer because of racial issues.

The New Empire Within Britain,  this essay is based on “Power of British empire” on black people. Here Salman Rushdie shows his different experiences of white and black in Britain. He also gives information about real roots of Britain.He says that “ Britain isn’t Nazi Germany. The British Empire isn’t the Third Reich, but in Germany after the fall of Hitler heroic attempts were made by many people to purity German thought and the German language of the pollution of Nazism.

Second thing that happens there is the numbers of “ Immigration “. The main fact of white immigration as well as black , that the annual number of emigrants leaving these shores is now larger than the numbers of immigrants coming in and of the black communities over 40 percent are not immigrants but black Britons born and bred, speaking in the many voices and accents of Britain , and with no homeland but this one

Thank you!