Belonging Beyond Boundaries: Postcolonial Voices in Midnight’s Children

Belonging Beyond Boundaries: Postcolonial Voices in Midnight’s Children

 This blog is part of a worksheet task on film screening of Midnight's children by Deepa Mehta. This task is assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. The aim of the task is to:

• Critically engage with the film adaptation of the novel.
• Explore important postcolonial themes such as hybrid identity, the narration of the nation, and the politics of English.
• Foster reflective and analytical thinking through guided activities.

For more information you can click here .

Pre-viewing      Activity

A. Trigger Questions (Class Discussion or Journal Entry)

Who narrates history the victors or the marginalized? How does this relate to personal identity?

History is often written by the victors, because those in power control how events are recorded and remembered. This can leave out or distort the experiences of the marginalized. However, when the marginalized tell their own stories, they offer a different, more personal view of history. Personal identity is shaped by which version of history we hear  the official one from the powerful, or the lived experiences of ordinary people.

What makes a nation? Is it geography, governance, culture, or memory?

A nation is more than just its borders on a map. Geography gives it land, governance provides structure and laws, and culture shapes its shared traditions and values. But memory  the collective stories, struggles, and achievements people remember and pass on  gives a nation its true identity. Without memory, the sense of belonging and connection that binds people together would fade, even if geography, governance, and culture remain.

Can language be colonized or decolonized? Think about English in India.

Language can be both colonized and decolonized. During colonial rule, English in India became a tool of power, administration, and education, often replacing or suppressing local languages. This was a form of linguistic colonization because it shaped thought, communication, and even social status in ways that favored the colonizers. However, after independence, Indians adapted English to express their own culture, identity, and experiences. In this way, English can also be decolonized  transformed from a symbol of colonial control into a medium for postcolonial expression.

B. Background Reading / Preparation

• Assign or recommend brief reading on these key postcolonial concepts:

1. Hybridity — Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, “Signs Taken for Wonders”

Bhabha explains hybridity as the mixing of colonial and local cultures, creating something new and unpredictable. In “Signs Taken for Wonders,” he shows how the colonized adapt colonial language and symbols (like the English Bible in India) but reinterpret them in their own ways, breaking the authority of the colonizer’s meaning. This challenges the idea of cultural purity and reveals identity as something fluid.

2. Nation as a Eurocentric Idea — Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments

Chatterjee argues that colonialism shaped the modern idea of the “nation” through European models. Colonized nations often adopted Western political structures but tried to preserve a distinct cultural identity in the “inner domain” of home, religion, and tradition. This shows how anti-colonial nationalism was both shaped by and resistant to colonial influence.

3. Chutnification of English — Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, “Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist”

Rushdie rejects the label “Commonwealth Literature,” arguing that English in former colonies is not a borrowed language but has been remade by its new speakers. In India, English has been “chutnified”  mixed with local languages, idioms, and cultural references  becoming a unique medium for postcolonial expression rather than a colonial leftover.

4. Film Adaptation & Voice — Mendes & Kuortti, “Padma or No Padma: Audience in the Adaptations of Midnight’s Children”

Mendes and Kuortti compare Rushdie’s novel and Mehta’s film, focusing on the character Padma, who listens to Saleem’s story in the book. In the novel, Padma represents the immediate audience and grounds Saleem’s narration in oral storytelling traditions. In the film, her role is removed, making the audience directly responsible for interpreting Saleem’s unreliable narration  shifting how voice and perspective work in the adaptation.

While-Watching  Activities 

• Students may be instructed to jot quick responses or observations during or immediately after watching key moments.

1. Nation & identity in Saleem’s narration

From the opening, Saleem tells us his life is inseparable from India’s history  born at the exact moment the nation gained independence. His personal milestones are described alongside the country’s turning points, making it hard to tell where his story ends and the nation’s begins. This blending suggests that in postcolonial storytelling, personal identity is often shaped by the fate of the country itself.

2. Saleem & Shiva’s birth switch and hybridized identities

When the nurse swaps the newborns, Saleem is raised in wealth but is biologically from a poor family, while Shiva grows up poor but was born into privilege. This switch hybridizes their identities on three levels:

• Biologically: each inherits genes from one social background but lives in another.

• Socially: their upbringing shapes their manners, opportunities, and worldview differently from their birth heritage.

• Politically: they become symbols of different “Indias”  privilege vs. struggle  yet neither is purely one or the other.

3. Saleem’s narration  trustworthiness & metafiction

Saleem is charming but clearly unreliable. He admits forgetting details, changes timelines, and mixes personal memories with historical facts. This metafictional style where the storyteller draws attention to the fact that they are telling a story makes us question the idea of “truth” in history. It reflects how history itself is shaped by who tells it, and how memory can be as political as it is personal.

4. Emergency Period — democracy & freedom

The film’s depiction of the Emergency shows forced sterilizations, censorship, and the silencing of opposition. Saleem’s family and friends suffer under the state’s control. These scenes criticize how post-independence India, despite its democratic ideals, could fall into authoritarian practices suggesting that freedom is fragile and must be actively protected.

5.English/Hindi/Urdu blending  postcolonial linguistic identity

Characters move fluidly between English, Hindi, and Urdu, often in the same conversation. English phrases are reshaped with Indian idioms, creating what Salman Rushdie calls the “chutnification” of English. This blending both subverts the colonial language by making it local and reflects the hybrid cultural identity of postcolonial India.

Post - viewing Activities 

A. Group Discussion / Short Presentation Topics

Divide students into 3 groups, each tackling a major postcolonial theme:

For this activity I'm part of group no.2 and we were discussed on the point Narrating the Nation.

 

Group 2: Narrating the Nation

• Explore how Midnight’s Children rewrites national history through personal narrative.

• Discuss the critique of Eurocentric nationhood — with its focus on linear progress, territorial integrity, and binary identities  (Hindu/Muslim,colonizer/colonized).

• Engage with Partha Chatterjee’s argument that nationalism in India diverged from Western models.

Activity:

Create a timeline juxtaposing historical events (e.g., Partition, Emergency) with Saleem’s personal journey.

Reflect: Is the idea of “India” coherent in the film — or is it fragmented?

My reflection from the activity: 

1. Create a timeline juxtaposing historical events with Saleem’s personal journey:

British India, 1947 -  Saleem is born just before midnight; his birth symbolizes the impending end of colonial rule and the birth of independent India.

Independence, 1947 - Saleem’s life begins exactly as India becomes independent, tying his personal story directly to the nation’s birth.

Partition, 1947 -  Saleem’s family and community are deeply affected by Partition’s violence and displacement, reflecting the fractured national identity.

 Indo-Pak War, 1965 - The war impacts Saleem’s sense of identity and belonging, mirroring the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan.

 Creation of Bangladesh, 1971 -  The breakup of Pakistan into Bangladesh is reflected through the chaos and division Saleem experiences in his personal life.

Emergency, 1975 -  Saleem’s life is disrupted by the political Emergency, symbolizing the suppression of freedom and democracy in India.

Partha Chatterjee’s critique of Eurocentric nationhood:

Partha Chatterjee argues that the idea of the nation in postcolonial countries like India is not a simple copy of European nationalism but fundamentally different. While European nationalism assumes a linear, territorial, and homogeneous identity, Indian nationalism creates a split between the material (political and economic structures inherited from colonialism) and the spiritual (culture and identity as sites of resistance). This division means Indian nationalism resists full assimilation into Western models by asserting cultural autonomy while still engaging with modern political forms. Midnight’s Children reflects this tension by blending personal, cultural, and political narratives to rewrite history from a non-Eurocentric perspective.

3. Reflect: Is the idea of “India” coherent in the film, or is it fragmented?

The idea of “India” in Midnight’s Children is deliberately fragmented rather than coherent. Saleem’s narrative reveals India as a complex mosaic of overlapping, conflicting identities and histories. The novel challenges neat, binary divisions (Hindu/Muslim, colonizer/colonized) and linear progress narratives by showing multiple voices, memories, and experiences. India emerges as a plural, hybrid, and sometimes chaotic nation a reflection of Partha Chatterjee’s argument that postcolonial nations must navigate both universal modernity and particular cultural differences.

I had done another group activity individually which is titled Chutnificaton of English 

Chutnificaton of English 

• Take a paragraph from Rushdie’s prose or dialogue from the film and analyze how he “chutnifies” English. 

• Translate it into “standard” English, and then reflect on what is lost.

Original "Chutnified" paragraph from Midnight's children by Salman Rushdie :

Padma-our plump Padma-is sulking magnificently. (She can't read and, like all fish-lovers, dislikes other people knowing anything she doesn't. Padma: strong, jolly, a consolation for my last days. But definitely a bitch-in-the-manger.) She attempts to cajole me from my desk: 'Eat, na, food is spoiling.' I remain stubbornly hunched over paper. 'But what is so precious,' Padma demands, her right hand slicing the air updownup in exasperation, 'to need all this writing-shiting?' I reply: now that I've let out the details of my birth, now that the perforated sheet stands between doctor and patient, there's no going back. Padma snorts. Wrist smacks against forehead. 'Okay, starve starve, who cares two pice?' Another louder, conclusive snort… but I take no exception to her attitude. She stirs a bubbling vat all day for a living; something hot and vinegary has steamed

her up tonight. Thick of waist, somewhat hairy of forearm, she flounces, gesticulates, exits. Poor Padma. Things are always getting her goat. Perhaps even her name: understandably enough, since her mother told her, when she was only small, that she had been named after the lotus goddess, whose most common appellation amongst village folk is 'The One Who Possesses Dung'.

2. “Standard” English Translation

Padma, my rather plump companion, is in a very bad mood. (She is illiterate and, like many who love fish, she resents others knowing things she does not. Padma is strong, cheerful, and a comfort to me in my final days, but she can also be very possessive and uncooperative.) She tries to persuade me to leave my desk: “Come and eat; the food is getting cold.” I stubbornly continue writing. “What could possibly be so important,” Padma asks, waving her hand up and down in frustration, “that you must keep doing all this writing?” I respond that now that I have begun telling the story of my birth, and the sheet of paper lies between writer and audience, I cannot stop. Padma sighs loudly and slaps her forehead. “Fine, go ahead and starve, I don’t care!” She sighs again, even more dramatically. I do not take offense she spends all day cooking over steaming pots, and tonight something hot and sour has made her irritable. She is thick-waisted, with rather hairy arms, and she storms out, making broad gestures as she goes. Poor Padma things always seem to irritate her. Even her name might bother her: her mother once told her, when she was very young, that she was named after the lotus goddess, whose nickname among villagers is “The One Who Possesses Dung.”

Reflection: What is Lost in Translation?

Rushdie’s “chutnification” blends English with Indian idioms, rhythms, and cultural references. In the original:

Code-mixing & colloquialisms: Words like na, writing-shiting, two pice carry cultural flavour, rhythm, and informality that “standard” English flattens.

Oral storytelling style: The repetition (“starve starve”), comic exaggeration (“updownup”), and Hindi-English slang give Padma’s voice authenticity.

Cultural anchoring: Expressions like “getting her goat” and “bitch-in-the-manger” gain a local texture in Rushdie’s version, while in the translation they feel generic.

Humour & personality: Rushdie’s playful tone and absurd metaphors (The One Who Possesses Dung) feel alive in “chutnified” form; the “standard” translation makes them sound more like polite biography.

When translated into standard English, the passage becomes smoother but loses the spice, playfulness, and Indian-nessthe very elements that make Rushdie’s prose unique.

B. Written Reflection / Blog Prompt

Ask each student to write a 500-700 word reflective blog answering:

“What does it mean to belong to a postcolonial nation that speaks in a colonizer’s tongue and carries the burden of fractured identities?”

Use Midnight’s Children (film and/or novel) to support your view.

Encourage the use of at least two critical sources in MLA style.

"To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world." 

— Midnight’s Children

Belonging to a postcolonial nation means living in the creative tension between the past and the present, between inherited colonial legacies and the desire to define one’s own identity. For India, this tension is most visible in its relationship with English  the language of its colonizers  and in the fractured yet dynamic identities of its people. Deepa Mehta’s Midnight’s Children, adapted from Salman Rushdie’s novel, portrays this condition vividly through the intertwined lives of Saleem Sinai and Shiva. Their stories reflect how personal histories are inseparable from national histories and how hybridity, though often born from displacement, can become a site of possibility.

Language: From Colonizer’s Tool to Cultural Expression

English entered India as a language of power, administration, and cultural dominance. It was designed to create a class “Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste” a clear colonial strategy of control. In Midnight’s Children, however, English is no longer the exclusive property of the colonizer. Rushdie’s “chutnification” of English  blending it with Hindi, Urdu, and local idioms transforms it into a medium capable of carrying Indian rhythms, humor, and cultural references. Phrases like “pickle of history” or the playful mixing of languages in dialogue are not just stylistic choices; they are acts of linguistic decolonization. As Rushdie notes in Imaginary Homelands, this linguistic mixing “celebrates the hybridity of Indian speech” (Rushdie 67), reclaiming English for Indian voices.

Fractured Identities in a Postcolonial World

Saleem and Shiva’s birth switch is more than a plot twist; it is a metaphor for postcolonial dislocation. Saleem, biologically the son of a poor Hindu woman, is raised in an affluent Muslim family. Shiva, born to wealth, grows up in poverty. This exchange fractures their “natural” identities, showing how the forces of history  colonialism, Partition, and political upheaval can disrupt the most intimate markers of selfhood. Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of the “Third Space” is helpful here: it is an in-between space where identities are not fixed but constantly negotiated. Saleem’s life in the Third Space allows him to embody multiple cultural, religious, and political influences at once. Shiva, too, occupies this in-between, though his response is marked by resentment and ambition.

The Nation as Personal Narrative

Midnight’s Children refuses to tell India’s story through the voice of the political victors. Instead, Saleem’s deeply personal narration merges national events with his own life, challenging the Eurocentric idea of nationhood as linear, uniform, and defined by fixed boundaries. Partha Chatterjee, in The Nation and Its Fragments, argues that Indian nationalism diverged from Western models by rooting itself in cultural memory and everyday life (Chatterjee 6). Saleem’s storytelling mirrors this  the history of India is also the history of his family, his body, and his relationships. National identity is thus revealed to be as hybrid and complex as any individual’s life.

Belonging as Burden and Possibility

To belong to such a nation is to carry the weight of historical fractures  the memory of colonization, the trauma of Partition, the contradictions of modern democracy. Yet it also means inheriting a rich tapestry of languages, traditions, and perspectives. The film depicts hybridity not as confusion, but as creative potential. Saleem’s “in-betweenness” gives him empathy, adaptability, and the ability to connect disparate worlds. In this way, hybridity becomes a form of cultural capital in the postcolonial era.

Conclusion

Belonging to a postcolonial nation that speaks in a colonizer’s tongue and bears fractured identities means living in constant negotiation  between languages, histories, and selves. But it also means having the tools to reshape those inheritances into something new. Midnight’s Children shows that while colonial history may have fractured identity, postcolonial creativity can weave it back together in unexpected ways. English, once a symbol of domination, can be transformed into an Indian language; hybridity, once a mark of displacement, can become a source of belonging.

References 

Barad , Dilip. “Worksheet on Film Screening Deepa Mehta’s Midnight’s Children.” Researchgate, Aug. 2025, www.researchgate.net/publication/394324036_Worksheet_on_Film_Screening_Deepa_Mehta’s_Midnight’s_Children. Accessed 11 Aug. 2025. 

Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture (1994).

Bounse, Sarah Habib. “Hybridity and Postcoloniality Formal - Social and Historical Inno.” Scribd, www.scribd.com/document/78270542/Hybridity-and-Postcoloniality-Formal-Social-and-Historical-Inno. Accessed 11 Aug. 2025. 

Mehta, D. (Director). (2012). Midnight’s children [Film]. David Hamilton Productions.

Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments

Rushdie, S. (1981). Midnight’s children. Jonathan Cape.

Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands; esp. essay

“Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist”

Zohra, Khatoon. “(PDF) A Postcolonial Study of Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnights Children.’” Researchgate, 30 Jan. 2025, www.researchgate.net/publication/389647577_A_postcolonial_study_of_Salman_Rushdie’s_Midnight’s_children. Accessed 11 Aug. 2025.