This
essay focuses on identity as the central theme in Salman Rushdie’s “Imaginary
Homelands” and analyzes how fragmented identities are created and the role of
imagination and memory in the creation of these fragmented identities. For this
purpose, each of the above mentioned components are considered one by one in
order to bring out the fact that how memory and imagination revolve around the
fragmented identities that are portrayed in the essay.
Identity
is not always definite. It is a pluralistic concept especially in the context
of Diasporas. “Perhaps instead of thinking of identity as an already
accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent, we should
think, instead of identity as a production which is never complete, always in
process, and always constituted within, not outside representation” (Hall 222) As
Hall rightly points out, identity is a product which is never complete. It
changes with time. A person can possess a single identity throughout his/her
life time or a multiple identity which is never static. Rushdie presents this
conflict in his essay that identity is a complex phenomenon. In many cases
identity becomes problematic and questionable. Rushdie himself embodies
multiple identities; Indian Muslim, Indian Migrant in Pakistan, British Indian
– Pakistani and after the publication of his novel Satanic Verses a
‘Traitor’ of Islam. As a result he has to deal with otherness that excludes him
from a community that he believes he belongs to. His identity as a Muslim was severely
questioned and criticized. He was considered as an “other” among the Muslim
communities. This becomes an example of Hall’s statement that “Diaspora
identities are… constantly producing and reproducing themselves through transformation
and difference” (235)
Identity
is never a completed entity and “the fully unified, completed, secure and
coherent identity is a fantasy.” (Hall 4) Possessing a completed identity in a
changing world is impossible. If we are bound with the idea that we have a
complete identity, it is only a comforting story that we have about ourselves
(Hall 5). Rushdie clearly portrays the fact that identity is always fragmented
and how we deal with fragmented identity gives us platform to express
ourselves. Rushdie says that even though identity is both plural and partial,
“it is not an infertile territory for a writer to occupy” (15). He enhances the
idea that multiple identities give a space for the emigrant writer to rehearse
the performance of his/her writing at different levels. The words “Indian” and
“Indianness”, especially for the Indian writers in England are contradictory
subjects. Rushdie says that these Indian writers in England are “by no means all
the same type of animal” (16) as they bear plural identities. In the case of Rushdie
he is an Indian, Pakistani and British Indian. According to Rushdie migrants
are “translated men” (17). The comparison between migrants and translation is
very apt and unique. Translation is a complex process. In a translation there
is room for many a deduction and production. So when migrants are considered as
translated men, it signifies that they have been patterned through the
production of new identities and the deduction of many other forms. Rushdie
poses many questions that directly question the notion of identity. “What does
it mean to be Indian, outside India?”(17), “Whom one is writing for?” (17).
Rushdie “never had a reader in mind” (19). He has “ideas, people, events,
shapes” and he “writes for those things” (19). If a migrant writer confines
his/her writing to the community that he/she belongs to, it will raise many
questions among the readers like ‘who are they to write about us?’, ‘what right
do they have to write about a country that they left and migrated to another?’.
Therefore migrant writers who possess multiple identities are obliged to answer
many questions and face many challenges and struggles.
Let
me introduce the role of imagination in the creation of fragmented identities.
Migrant writers are always haunted by some sense of loss and the longing to
look back. But Rushdie says that the unavoidable reality tells them that they
will create imaginary homelands. Not exactly what they lost. As such,
imagination is like the root of their thoughts and from which comes the
imagined fictions, cities and villages. But for the reader, these imagined
fictional villages and cities act as a bridge that connects the writer and the
past that he/she had lost. R.K Narayan writes in his introduction to the book Malgudi
Days that he was often curiously questioned by his readers about Malgudi,
its whereabouts, people and culture. Although “University of Chicago Press has
published a literary atlas with a map of India indicating the location of
Malgudi”(Narayan 8), R.K says that “all I can say is that it is imaginary and
not to be found on any map” (8). The truth is that Malgudi is a fictional
village created by R.K. Narayan to situate his novels and short stories. So, in
this case, the creation of an imaginary land becomes reality in the readers’ mind.
Likewise, the fact that migrant writers create Imaginary Homelands is indeed
powerful that it acts as a connecting point between the reader and the writer.
Rushdie justifies his claim that migrant writers create imaginary homelands by
establishing the fact that “my India was just that: ‘my’ India, a version and
no more than one version of all the hundreds of millions of possible versions”
(10). I agree with his point because the stories we have about our country completely
differ from the ones others have. For
instance, the view of Sri Lanka from a Sinhala Buddhist will be completely
different from a Muslim or a Tamil. It is ‘we’ who determine what kind of
stories we have about our homeland. The power of imagination is best portrayed
by Benedict Anderson in his lines that “communities are to be distinguished,
not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined”
(49). Enoch Powell also brings about the same idea that “the life of nations no
less than that of men is lived largely in the imagination.” (50) Thus, the fact
that imagination and identity are interconnected is strengthened according to
Benedict Anderson and Enoch Powell.
In
his essay Rushdie talks about memory and its function in the creation of a
fragmented identity. The essay begins with a reference to an old photograph.
The photograph takes him back to a past that he has lost. This photograph is a
piece of memory that clings on to him till now. It serves as a path that
connects his present and past, a path that leads him to his lost past. However
in the case of Adib Khan, a Bangladeshi Australian immigrant writer, the role
of a photograph is different. Soon after his visit to his homeland -
Bangladesh, “he removed from his Melbourne flat an old photograph of Dhaka as
it was no longer real – Dhaka had changed unrecognizably in his absence”
(Lokuge 48) Khan is impelled to remove the photograph because it no longer
represents his past and connects him to his homeland. Although Rushdie
expresses the idea that past is a lost home and the stories that migrant
writers create about their homelands are imaginary ones, the photograph of his
homeland takes him back to his good old days. Even though Bombay is clearly
changed, he does not feel to throw away a piece of reminiscent that connects
his present and the past that he had lost. It reflects his strong connection
with his (lost) homeland. Rushdie feels that his present is foreign and the
past is a lost home. “It is my present that is foreign and that the past is
home, albeit a lost home in a lost city in the mists of lost time” (9). The
memory that he associates with his past is very close to his heart. Whereas he
refers to his present as ‘foreign’. This foreignness indicates his life in
Britain as an ‘other’ who is lost in his own past and his memories about his
past reflect his problematic identity. He feels foreign in Britain. His identity
as a British Indian becomes problematic when it gives him the feeling of
foreignness.
The
memories that Rushdie recalls are also in fragmented forms. Rushdie says that
in Midnight’s Children the narrator Saleem’s mistakes “are the mistakes
of a fallible memory compounded by quirks of character and of circumstance” (10).
This fallible memory of Saleem makes him a narrator who is not reliable and
that leads to questions regarding his identity. The novel Midnight’s
Children was born when he visited his home in Bombay. It is like a flower
bloomed from the seeds of the past.
The
significantly beautiful metaphor Rushdie employs to connect his fragmented
memory is a broken mirror. Broken mirror gives us many reflections of an object
unlike the unflawed one which gives only one. In this way, Rushdie’s metaphor
of a broken mirror to fragmented memory works really well. “The broken glass is
not merely a mirror of nostalgia. It is also, I believe, a useful tool with
which to work in the present” (12). Rushdie’s words reveal the fact that the
employment of fragmented memories allows us to recreate and modify our present
in an effective way. Albeit the memory is fragmented, he remembers many details
about the Bombay of 1950s. He remembers the “clothes people worn”, “school
scenes”, “Bombay dialogue verbatim”, “advertisements”, “film posters”, “tooth –
paste adds for Binaca and for Kolynos” (11) and so on. These are all powerful
examples of a fragmented memory. Even though Rushdie left his country long ago,
his memory in fragments brings him back even the tiniest details of Bombay that
relished him when he was a small boy. Sometimes, even a person who was born and
lived in Bombay during his/her entire lifetime may not remember the tiniest
details that Rushdie remembers. Therefore the fact that broken mirror is
sometimes powerful than the unflawed one is proven true by Rushdie’s
recollections and reminiscences of the past.
Rushdie
supports his point with Milan Kundera’s words that “the struggle of man against
power is the struggle of memory against forgetting” (14). My point here is the
connection between fragmented memories and fragmented identity. Rushdie’s
fragmented memories reflect his identity which is fragmented. The memories in fragments
play a major part in the creation of an identity that is also fragmented.
However, the memories in fragments also act as a tool to create and recreate
the present.
From
the above analysis, it is obvious that fragmented memories play a significant role
as if they act as the strong base for the creativity of the migrant writers.
However writers’ powerful imagination builds it up into a complete whole. Even
though the creation is a complete whole it reflects past memories, present
imagination and thus fragmented identities. Migrant writers are constantly
patterned and shaped through the complexity of identity, powerful imagination
and the fragmented memories. These forms in fragments open up a vast space for
the migrant writers to portray their constant struggles and battles to overcome
the problems that they face regarding the fragmented and problematic identities
that they possess. I would like to
conclude that in his nostalgic and powerful essay “Imaginary Homelands”,
Rushdie portrays the fact that ‘Identity’, which is fragmented, pluralistic,
complex, a production which is never complete and always in process is
constantly crafted and re- crafted through the powerful imagination and the
memories in fragments.
Works Cited
Anderson,
Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of
Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.
Hall,
Stuart. Held, David. Hubert, Don. and Thompson Kenneth, ed. Modernity An
Introduction to Modern Societies. London: Polity Press, 1995.
Hall,
Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.”. Identity : Community, Culture,
Difference. Ed. Rutherford, Jonathan. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990.
Lokuge,
Chandani. “Re – visiting the Homeland: Philosophical and Aesthetic Dimensions
in Abid Khan’s Spiral road”. Asiatic
2 (2008): 48-57.
Narayan,R.K.
Malgudi days.Chennai: Indian Thought Publications, 2011.
Rushdie,
Salman. “Imaginary Homelands”. Imaginary
Homelands: Essays and Criticism London: Vintage, 2010.
Other
References
Cook,
Rufus. “Place and Displacement in Salman Rushdie’s work”. World Literature
Today. 68 (1994): 23-28.
Sharma,
Shailija. “Salman Rushdie: The Ambivalence of Migrancy”. Twentieth Century
Literature. 47 (2001): 596-618.
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