Salman Rushdie as an Essayist

Click Here to Evaluate my Assignment

Paper Name : The Post-Colonial Literature

Assignment Topic : Salman Rushdie as an Essayist

 
Name: Solanki Pintu V

Sem : 3

Roll No : 29

Enrollment No: PG15101037

Email: solankipintu1991@gmail.com

Submitted to :

           M.K. BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY
                     Department Of English

• Salman Rushdie as a Essayist

• INTRODUCTION OF AUTHOR

     Salman Rushdie, is born in Bombay born and London based novelist, was born in a Muslim middle class family on 19 June 1947 in Bombay. He has written ten novels, two collections of short stories, many literature reviews and essays and two documentary films.

      He is a recipient of many awards along with 'Booker of Bookers'. Salman Rushdie is called “The demon-king of Indian English literature.” Rushdie is part of the bumper crop of Indian Writing in English. “One could hardly disagree with Rushdie that on the map of world literature. India has been undersized for a really long time, yet a guard product of writing in English has risen up out of the non-supreme postcolonial societies, particularly from India.

   Rushdie's books manage numerous topics like history, governmental issues, love, disgrace, religion, outcast and rootlessness. Rushdie's work is so specific, as far as topic, subjects, setting, story-telling gadgets and formal artistic technique that nobody yet he can talk in his tongue.

• INTRODUCTION OF “ IMAGINARY HOMELANDS “

       Imaginary homelands is an accumulation of Salman Rushdie’s essays. These essays withal a different amassment of sundry articles, seminar papers, reviews published over a decade of his literary lifetime during 1981-1991.Imaginary Homelands is incisive, intellectual, probing, eloquent and lively. From this essay one can take issue with its wide scope.


             "It may be that writers in my position, exiles or emigrants or expatriates are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt. But if we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge – which gives rise to profound uncertainties – that our 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 fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, India’s of the mind."("Imaginary Homelands")

     Salman Rushdie selects different subjects like political, social, and literary topics in this essay with various deals and critical approaches. After reading this book, the reaction to such book can only be personal and subjective and it is not a story that can be discussed with some degree of detachment. Imaginary Homelands is a personal conversation by Rushdie.

    From his inditement we can optically discern a potency of Rushdie over media and he is that kind of an inditer.Every reader has divergent view about this book. It is depend on our individual mindset. Rushdie’s literary style is plenary of innovation because of being a migrant and an author. It’s base on authenticity and Rushdie feels a kinship with the writers who indites their books with fantasy and authenticity.

“ In Midnight’s children” , Rushdie said that-
                “ The illusion itself is reality “

• Commonwealth Literature doesn’t exist:

    In Commonwealth literature Does not exist Rushdie pointed that Indian Society and Indian literature have an intricate and developing relationship with the English Language. This kind of Post-Colonial dialectic is propounded as one of the unifying factors in ‘Commonwealth literature’, but it does not exist , or at least is far more peripheral to the problems of literature in Canada, Australia, even South Africa . later he verbalized that English literature has its Indian branch. by this he describes that it is literature of the English Language .this literature is additionally Indian Literature .

Here is the actual text the opening of Rushdie’s essay

   “It strikes me that my title may not really be accurate. There is clearly such as thing as ‘Commonwealth literature’, because even ghosts can be made to exist if you set up enough faculties, if you write enough books and appoint enough research students…So perhaps I should rephrase myself: ‘Commonwealth literature’ should not exist. If it did not, we could appreciate writers for what they are…we could discuss literature in terms of its real groupings….and if all English literatures could be studied together, a shape would emerge which would truly reflect the new shape of the language in the world.” 
       In his essay "'Commonwealth Literature' Does Not Exist" , Rushdie describes the category 'Commonwealth Literature' as a ghetto, created by those who practice English literature 'proper'. "Every ghetto has its own rules" and "one of the rule one of the ideas on which the edifice rests, is that literature is an expression of nationality", and that culture springs from tradition. He says that "what we are facing here is the bogy of Authenticity ... (which) is the respectable child of old-fashioned exoticism. It demands that sources, forms, style, language and symbol all derive from a supposedly homogeneous and unbroken tradition".

• THE NEW EMPIRE WITHIN BRITAIN

    In this essay he natters about Racism. He integrated that racism is not a side-issue in contemporary Britain. Britain is undergoing a critical phase not simply economic period and thus crisis is not simply economic or political.. E.P. Thompson has described as the last colony of the British empire. British authorities don’t believe of exporting government rather they have chosen to import a Empire a new community of group of people whom they dealt with ‘ The fluttered folk and wild’ the ‘new caught’ sullen peoples , half-devil and half-child who made for Rudyard Kipling the White man’s burden.

    He gives an example of how black and white immigrants were treated in the similar two cases. First, an African black family landed at Heathrow airport and the media made a huge fuss out of it. Second, in the same week, a white Zimbabwean family came there was no hue and cry. Even though blacks were, citizens they were denied the right while the white who were not the citizens and had the ancestors living in Britain centuries before were treated like legal British citizen.

• Attenborough’s Gandhi:

    In the essay ‘Attenborough’s Gandhi’ in which Salman Rushdie talks about the Rushdie criticizes the Amritsar massacre Dyer’s action at Jallianwala Bagh and Gandhi film.

        Looking at Postcolonial way In this essay he deconstruct the movie ‘Gandhi’ by Attenborough. Ben kinglsy has played role of Gandhiji this movie. Beginning of the essay he saying 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 the spirituality.

     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.

• Hobson-Jobson

      Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive, or Hobson-Jobson is a historical dictionary of Anglo-Indian words and terms from Indian languages which came into use during the British rule of India. Indian words and terms from Indian languages which came into use during the British rule of India. Hobson – Jobson is written by Henry Yule and Arthur C. Brunel . It published in 1886.


Examples

'basi khana,' stale food or yesterday's dinner
the fish 'kapap' became 'cock-up'
'bringal'--aubergine--became 'brown jolly'
the Indian plant 'kawanch' became 'cowage'

• CONCLUSION :-

  His way Salman Rushdie gives his critical conceptions on different subject. From these subjects he has shown some facts of India, Britain and Gandhi withal. He shows his potency of critical analysis throughout  “ Imaginary Homelands “.

REFERANCES-

http://languageinindia.com/dec2010/prabhaparmarrushdie.pdf
http://krutikaz.blogspot.in/2014/10/salman-rushdie-as-essayist-imaginary.html
https://www.hitpages.com/doc/4888487518011392/1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson-Jobson

Click Here to Evaluate my Assignment