“Ain’t It a Ripping Night”: Alcoholism and the Legacies of Empire in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.

Sam Goodman

doi:10.1080/0013838x.2018.1436286

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the era of decolonisation that followed the Second World War, various authors sought to engage with India and the Empire’s past anew throughout their novels, identifying medicine and illness as key parts of Imperial authority and colonial experience. Salman Rushdie’s approach to the Raj in Midnight’s Children (1981) focused on the broad sweep of colonial life, juxtaposing the political and the personal. This article argues that Rushdie explores the history of colonial India by employing alcohol and alcoholism as lenses through which to explore the cultural, political and medical legacies of Empire. Through analysis of Midnight’s Children as well as a range of medical sources related to alcohol and inebriation, it will illustrate how drinking is central to Rushdie’s approach to secular and religious identities in newly independent India, as well as a means of satirising and undermining the supposed benefit that Empire presented to India and Indians.

Highlights

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is as much an assault on the senses as it is a novel
Through analysis of Midnight’s Children as well as a range of medical sources related to alcohol and inebriation, it will illustrate how drinking is central to Rushdie’s approach to secular and religious identities in newly independent India, as well as a means of satirising and undermining the supposed benefit that Empire presented to India and Indians
It must be acknowledged that this scholarly focus has not, to date, included sustained analysis of the significant recurrence and narrative predominance of medicine and health within Midnight’s Children, nor has the critical field addressed the utility of medicine more broadly as a means through which to read Anglo-Indian fiction produced after the end of the British Empire, or, further still, that of European colonialism.[6]

Summary

Introduction

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is as much an assault on the senses as it is a novel. Through analysis of Midnight’s Children as well as a range of medical sources related to alcohol and inebriation, it will illustrate how drinking is central to Rushdie’s approach to secular and religious identities in newly independent India, as well as a means of satirising and undermining the supposed benefit that Empire presented to India and Indians.

Results

Conclusion