Human Dignity, National Identity and Fragmented Self as in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

Abstract

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, through the life of the protagonist Saleem Sinai, explores the relation between individual identity and national history. This paper argues that Rushdie presents human dignity as inseparable from cultural plurality and

historical memory. Salman Rushdie uses magical realism as a political and ethical strategy in Midnight’s Children. Rushdie fuses the supernatural with the historical narrative and thereby constructs a language, which gains dignity to marginalized subjects against colonial,

nationalist and authoritarian erasure. Rushdie also discusses how colonial legacies and national authoritarianism remain as a threat to individual dignity. Human dignity and identity are regained through storytelling and collective memory.