ChapterⅠThe Loss of Colonial Memory and the Breakup ofthe Indian Community
1.1 Absence of Memory:The Disintegration of Political Community
After India’s independence,a new generation of young people symbolized thehope of this emerging country.They established Midnight Children’s Conference inhopes of building a better India.However,the absence of the colonial history led toidentity dislocation.So it causes internal disunity and internal conflicts,which eventually led to the dissolution of the Conference,which represented the breakdownof the political community.
The life of the midnight’s children was precisely the dilemma and identityconfusion faced by the younger generation after the founding of India.The childrenrepresented by Saleem were born in the early hours of the day of India’sindependence,which meant the 581 children born in that hour represented India’shope for the future.Their birth was accompanied by national celebrations,and evenSaleem received a letter of congratulations from the Prime Minister of India,Jawaharlal Nehru:“Dear Baby Saleem,My belated congratulations on the happyaccident of your moment of birth!You are the newest bearer of that ancient face ofIndia which is also eternally young.We shall be watching over your life with theclosest attention;it will be,in a sense,the mirror of our own.”(167).The childrenborn with India were a reflection of this new country and the hope of this country.They were independent Indians who want to build this new country into a wonderfulone.So,the group of children born between 0:00 and 1:00 a.m.on Independence Daywith special talents formed the Midnight Children’s Conference.Beginning in 1958,581 midnight sons gathered in Saleem’s mind.In a way,it’s a political meeting,like aparliament.
1.2 Rejection of Memory:The Collapse of Spiritual Community
In addition to unconsciously forgetting the memory of India’s colonized history,the novel also shows another kind of forgetting:the deliberate forgetting of colonizedmemory.Deliberately forgetting or even betraying their memories can lead to identitymisalignment.Therefore,they cannot be identified in the two cultures,which leads tothe collapse of the spiritual community.In Midnight’s Children,Saleem’s grandfatheris a typical character who deliberately forgets and betrays the colonial memories.As aresult,he is caught in a self-identity predicament where his identity is misplaced.
Saleem’s grandfather,Aadam Aziz,was born in Kashmir and returned fromstudying medicine in Germany.After returning home,he witnessed his hometownbeing occupied by British troops,“In those days there was no army camp at thelakeside,no endless snakes of camouflaged trucks and jeeps clogged the narrowmountains past Baramulla and Gulmarg.In those days travelers were not shot as spiesif they took photographs of bridges”(5).In addition to discovering that British troopswere stationed in his hometown,Aziz also witnessed the killing of his owncountrymen by British troops.On April 13,1919,the army led by British GeneralReginald Dyer,without warning,fired on the Indian crowd gathered in JallianwalaBagh,causing 370 trapped protestors lay dead and over 1,000 wounded.Azizexperienced this hellish slaughter and witnessed the brutality of the colonists againstthe Indian people,and he is also a witness to that history.However,he chose to forgetthis history and Indian culture,instead looking at the Indian and his compatriots froma colonial perspective.When he returned home,he could not get used to the backwardliving conditions in Kashmir.Even his observations of his hometown are in a Westernperspective.“Instead of the beauty of the tiny valley circled by giant teeth,he noticedthe narrowness,the proximity of the horizon;
Chapter II Recovery of Historical Memory and the Causesof the Breakup of Indian Community
2.1 Family Memory:The Geographical Invasion of the British
The invasion of the colonists is reflected in the land.The people of India ownedtheir land in the Indian subcontinent and lived a happy life.However,the Britishcolonists occupied a part of India,which caused the Indian people to be affected andhurt by the British colonists in their material life,resulting in the loss of thegeographical community.
Since his birth,Saleem had lived on Methwold’s Estate,which was originallyowned by the British colonist William Methwold.Why did Saleem’s parents came tothe estate to buy a house to live?His parents’memories of buying a house illustratedthe loss of land in India.
Firstly,Mumbai is a testament to British colonization.After the arrival of thePortuguese navigator Vasco da Gama(1469-1524)in India in 1498,Dutch,Englishand French people came to India.After the collapse of the Mughal Empire,the lastfeudal dynasty in Indian history,Western colonial powers further colonized and plundered India.In the end,Britain won and began more than two hundred years ofcolonial domination.Among them,the city of Mumbai played an important role inBritish colonization.From the establishment of British colonial rule in Bombay in the17th century,Bombay began a tortuous start in urban construction.Initially,BritishEast India Company took over Bombay.During this period,the city of Bombay gotpreliminary development.It developed maritime trade so that the economy developed.In 1858,British East India Company ended its rule of India,and the British colonizedIndia directly.Since then,Bombay had been further developed.Due to theconstruction of urban infrastructure and the construction of factories,Bombay hadtransformed from a commercial city to a manufacturing city,making Bombay enter agolden age of development,thus becoming a metropolis and an important part of theglobal economic and trade system.Bombay was essentially a colonial city,and it wascolonial rule that led to this city’s economic development(Yu,2018).There was anold song to describe this city“Prima in Indis,/Gateway to India,/Star of the East/With her face to the West./”(122)As a result,a large number of British people cameto India to buy real estate and gain a lot of wealth.Saleem’s father came to Mumbaito make money in business after a failed career,buying a house from WilliamMethwold,an Englishman.
2.2 Oral Memory:The Cleavage of Ethnic Ties of Kinship
Halbwachs discusses the relationship between individual and collective memory.He argues that“the formation of collective memory needs to be supported by thepower of the certain group,and the collective memory is preserved among theaggregates formed by each individual,and each individual may draw energy from thiscollective memory”(Erill,2011:113).Many individual memories make up collectivememory,and collective memory also awakens individual memory.A new generation of individuals will derive memories from it.Oral memory is a method of telling andpassing on Indian history to younger generations.This history can help them explorethe reasons for the fragmentation of the blood community and contribute to theiridentity construction.
That history is revealed through the mysteries of Saleem’s birth,told bySaleem’s nanny,Mary Perey.Mary was the female nurse who bathed Saleem when hewas born.After Saleem came home from the hospital,Mary quit her job to work ashis nanny,taking care of him growing up.In the eleventh year after Saleem was born,the Sinai family discovered that he was not their biological child,so Mary told thechild’s life experience.Saleem was originally the illegitimate child of WilliamMethwold,the original owner of the estate,and a lower-class married Indian womanwho came to the estate to perform.On the day of his birth,Mary exchanged him withShiva,the real Sinai child.In this way,the illegitimate child of a British colonist anda married Indian woman was transferred to grow up in a middle-class family in India.Through the unfolding of his life experience,Saleem not only knows who hisbiological father is,but also understands the invasion of the British colonists.
Chapter III Writing Memory and Reconstructing Indian Community..................33
3.1 Representing Memory:Rebuilding the Community by Blood.....................34
3.2 Storing Memory:Forming the Community of Mind.............................38
Chapter III Writing Memory and Reconstructing IndianCommunity
3.1 Representing Memory:Rebuilding the Community by Blood
Saleem gained memories of the past and gained a good understanding of himselfand India.So,when faced with the question“Who am I?”he answered“I am the sum total of everything that went before me,of all I have beenseen done,of everything done-to-me.I am everyone everything whosebeing-in-the-world affected was affected by mine.I am anything thathappens after I’ve gone which would not have happened if I had not come.Nor am I particulary exceptional in this matter;each‘I’,every one of thenow-six-hundred-million-plus of us,contains a similar multitude.I repeatfor the last time:to understand me,you’ll have to swallow a world.”(535)Therefore,for Saleem,telling Padma about his family can help him regain his identity,regain ownership of past memories and events,and take control of his own history.
First of all,Saleem no longer shies away from his Anglo-Indian identity.Whentelling the story of his own family,he bluntly stated that he was the illegitimate son ofa British colonist and the wife of a busker.When Padma denounced Saleem as a liar,an Indian of British descent,and a monster,Saleem retorted that he was not a monster.“Nor have I been guilty of trickery.I provided clues…In a kind of collective failure ofimagination,we learned that we simply could not think our way out of our past”(158).For Saleem,there was no way to change the past,he could only accept it.When he didn’t know the past history,he could still find his father for himself,butwhen he knew that he is a child of the British and Indians,he couldn’t separate fromthese clues.It was an indisputable fact that the British colonized India.Although bornin India,he was still the legacy of the empire in India,which could not be changed.For Saleem,the people who knew the secret at the time have basically passed away,and he could have lived a happy life without telling it.But he knew the past historyand couldn’t forget his own life experience.He always remembered that he was notjust an Indian,he was an Indian with imperial blood.And this was also a constantreminder that India was once colonized,which helped the Indian people to shape theirnational identity.
As an outstanding post-colonial novel,Midnight’s Children shows theappearance of India in the post-colonial period and the confusion of Indians abouttheir identity.Based on the theory of memory writing,this thesis explores theestablishment of postcolonial identities by Indians in the postcolonial era.JanAssmann argues that memory plays an important role in identity construction.Thisidea is also reflected in the novel.In the novel,Saleem breaks the past history,explores the memory by himself,and then tells the memory by himself,and passesthe memory to the next generation to shape his post-colonial identity in India andIndian community.
First of all,the first chapter of the thesis discusses the loss of memory of theIndian people,which leads to the failure of their own identity construction and thebreakup of the community.If one person loses his memory,he will not know who heis,where he came from,let alone where he is going.For the younger generation,theyare born after India’s independence.For them,the scene of India’s colonization hasnot been experienced or witnessed.This memory of colonization is missing for them,which causes them to be confused about their national identity.As the hope of India,the members of Midnight’s Children are not united,which causes the disintegration ofpolitical community.And the Indians who witness the colonization of India,theyrefuse to reject this memory.Therefore,they forget the traditional Indian culture andaccept the culture of the colonizers,but in this newly independent country,they arenot recognized by their compatriots,and the culture of the colonists also do not acceptthem.In both cultures,then,they face identity misalignment in two different cultureswhich led to the collapse of spiritual community.