Unity in diversity: The Carnivalesque in Midnight’s Children

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children contains one of my favourite quotes: “The most significant things in our life often happen in our absence.”

This line zeros in on key theme of the 208,000 word novel, and it hints to why the story of Saleem is first introduced through his grandparents first meeting. There is a sense that his grandfather’s life choices, and the socio-political situations that happened around him are the reason for why Saleem is the way he is.

There is a comfort in ascribing the reasons for our identity, behaviour and livelihood to external circumstances because it relieves us of the heavy burden of responsibility.

To know that such core elements of our lives are out of our control and predetermined is an ultimately freeing experience that gives us the opportunity to appreciate rather than fret over where we are. It also allows us to step outside of our individuality and connect with the world around us.

India's 'unity in diversity'

India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had an abstract view of India’s unity. He felt that Indians were united by something internal and personal, rather than by ‘larger’ factors such as culture or national identity. In his memoir The Discovery of India, Nehru explains

"Though outwardly there was diversity and infinite variety among our people, everywhere there was that tremendous impress of oneness…The unity of India was no longer merely an intellectual conception for me : it was an emotional experience which overpowered me." (Nehru, 59).

He alludes here to a spiritual, inner unity between India’s people that transcends boundaries such as beliefs and formalities. This idea is idealistic and difficult to articulate, however, Salman Rushdie manages to illustrate it in his novel Midnight's Children through the use of carnivalesque elements.

What is the Carnivalesque?

Theorised by Russian Philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, carnivalesque narratives are ones which embody the free and frenzied nature of a carnival to strip away hierarchies and order to portray uncover truths about human nature and life. Bakhtin describes the theory in his book Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics by saying

“all distance between people is suspended… all things that were once self-enclosed, disunified, distanced from one another by a noncarnivalistic hierarchical worldview are drawn into carnivalistic contacts and combinations” (Bakhtin, 122-3).

Key elements of the carnivalesque

• A blurring of boundaries (life and death, rich and poor etc)

• Chaotic diversity and multiplicity

• Informality and a suspension of hierarchy

• Focus on the collective over the individual

The Carnivalesque in Saleem's birth

Several Carnivaleque elements are on display as Saleem, the book's main character, is born. This key scene juxtaposes his birth with Nehru's independence speech to portray an internal connection between India's citizens and blur the personal-political divide.

Chaotic Diversity

As Saleem is about to be born in the hospital, several things are described to be going on at once. Two women are giving birth, while their husbands, doctors and midwives support them. Eight characters are crowded in a single paragraph, each engaged in different actions and roles. Unusually long sentences are also used this scene, in particular, a sentence eight lines long is used to describe how the new born Saleem is taken from his biological mother and given to another woman:

“Mary took the child of my mother's womb, who was not to be her son…but with … knees as knobbly as Ahmed Sinai's… and brought it to Wee Willie Winkie… who hardly saw his new son… who had just learned that Vanita had not managed to survive her childbearing”(116).

By deliberately leaving out punctuations, space is reduced between the various characters, and they are not separated by their different roles or positions. Attention is drawn away from their specific personal experiences and instead focus is shifted to the bigger picture which they are all a part of. As Bakhtin describes: “All distance between people is suspended, and a special carnival category goes into effect: free and familiar contact among people" (168)

The vibrant diversity of characters in this unified image creates a spectacle which is enhanced by the minimisation of their individuality. An image of India where its citizens are unified by their parts in a bigger picture rather than by a shared culture is conveyed, indicative of Nehru's view that there can exist unity in diversity.

A blurring of boundaries

Bakhtin details, of the carnival, “[Carnival] combines the sacred with the profane, the lofty with the low, the great with the insignificant, the wise with the stupid.” (Bakhtin, 163).

The most striking example of how such misalliances creates unity is through the metaphor of life and death. In the scene of Saleem’s birth, Saleem's biological mother, Vanita dies while the other characters in the hospital are preoccupied with the excitement of the new baby. The way death is portrayed beside the celebration of life, without drawing attention towards it, shows that the usually polar opposites life and death are thought of here as simply two sides on the cycle of bodily life.

As Bakhtin notes,

“death is not a negation of life seen as the great body of all the people but part of life as a whole… Death is included in life, and together with birth determines its eternal movement” (Bakhtin, 50).

Depicting death and life as side by side in the carnival portrays a bigger picture of the cycle of life that adds grandeur to both extremes of the cycle. This illustration of a society where the extremes of life take place in close proximity, without formal separations, implies the presence of a greater unifying cycle or system that is impartial to differences.

Suspension of hierarchy

As Saleem is being born, Nehru's pivotal speech goes on concurrently,

“Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny; and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge-not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially… It is two minutes to twelve” (Rushdie, 114).

The way Nehru’s speech is punctuated shows a rejection of the formal reverence reserved for a major historic event, and implies that the content of Nehru’s speech is not prioritised over the personal lives of the characters in the hospital.

There is a closeness born between the common people of India, represented by Saleem's family, and the political powers by the degrading effect of cutting the Prime Minister’s speech short.

This closeness is further established in the lines “cries, bellows, the howls of children arriving in the world, their unavailing protests mingling with the din of independence” (Rushdie, 115). The way the sounds of the new born babies are said to be “mingling” with the sounds of India’s independence shows that the sounds merge into one, and that they are not separate entities but rather parts of a bigger picture of India’s progress.

In fact, Nehru’s speech is punctuated without any clear ending to his points, leaving gaps in how the Prime Minister's ideas are represented in Rushdie’s novel. His half represented ideas do not stand on their own in the text, and appearing as though they are meant to be complemented by the lives of characters in the hospital. It can be inferred that the citizens are meant to exemplify and represent Nehru’s ideals and hopes for a new India.

A connection to the world

The fact that the characters in the novel come together to participate in the image of the carnival allows for us to step outside of ourselves and view our lives as part of a bigger whole. The chaos in the story, represented by everyday occurrences like birth and death, challenge dominant national narratives of where unity stems from and offers solace in how our place to the world can be largely out of our control.

In Singapore, with our tight spaces and high population density, we have a heightened awareness of our impact on our surroundings and our existence as a piece in something larger. In the same way, it might be wise to also reflect on how our surroundings might be affecting us.