Film Screening—Deepa Mehta's Midnight's Children

 This blog is written as a task assigned by the head of the Department of English (MKBU), Prof. and Dr. Dilip Barad Sir.

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1. Pre-viewing Activities

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

Prevailing view: History is typically told from the perspective of the victors, allowing those in power to craft the “official” version in ways that legitimize their actions and worldview.

Postcolonial perspective: Thinkers such as Gayatri Spivak (Can the Subaltern Speak?) contend that the voices of the marginalized—particularly the colonized and oppressed—are often excluded or distorted in mainstream historical accounts.

Connection to personal identity: When a community’s past is erased or misrepresented, its members may come to accept the dominant account, which can lead to identity confusion, feelings of inferiority, or disconnection from their heritage. In contrast, reclaiming forgotten or suppressed histories can help restore dignity, pride, and a stronger sense of self.

Illustration: In the Indian context, colonial narratives frequently downplayed local resistance movements; bringing these stories to light transforms how modern Indians view their own identity.

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

A nation is rarely made of just one thing — it’s more like a woven fabric where geography, governance, culture, and memory are the threads, each essential, but none sufficient alone.

1. Geography – Physical territory gives a nation its boundaries, resources, and sometimes its strategic advantage. But territoryalone can’t make a nation — plenty of regions share a map but not a national identity.

2. Governance – Laws, institutions, and political systems hold the framework together. A functioning state can enforce unity, but governance without shared values can feel imposed rather than embraced.

3. Culture – Language, traditions, art, and shared social practices create a sense of belonging. Culture is often what people cling to when borders shift or governments change.

4. Memory – Collective remembrance of history — victories, tragedies, myths, and struggles — shapes identity. Even imagined or selectively remembered histories can forge powerful national bonds (Benedict Anderson called nations “imagined communities” for this reason).

In short: geography gives a nation space, governance gives it structure, culture gives it soul, and memory gives it meaning. Remove one, and the fabric starts to fray.

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

Yes — language can be both colonized and decolonized, and English in India is one of the clearest examples.

1. Colonizing a language
When the British introduced English in India, it wasn’t just a neutral communication tool. It was a political project:

• Power & control – English became the language of law, administration, and education, giving access to jobs and privilege only to those who mastered it.

• Cultural hierarchy – Indigenous languages were treated as “vernacular” (less prestigious), while English was framed as modern, rational, and superior.

• Shaping thought – Colonial education used English literature and history to project British values and worldviews, subtly aligning the colonized mind with the colonizer’s narrative .

2. Decolonizing a language
After independence, India didn’t discard English — instead, it began to indigenize it:

• Appropriation – Writers like R.K. Narayan, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, and Kamala Das infused English with Indian idioms, rhythms, and cultural references, making it carry Indian realities.

• Political reclamation – English became a link language across India’s diverse linguistic regions, no longer tied to British rule but to Indian identity.

• Subversion – Postcolonial literature often uses English to critique colonialism itself, turning the colonizer’s tool into a weapon of resistance.

3. The paradox
English in India is now both a colonial inheritance and a postcolonial asset. It carries the scars of domination but also the power of global connection and local creativity.

So, yes — a language can be colonized when it is imposed and shaped by power structures, and it can be decolonized when speakers reshape it to express their own realities, histories, and voices.

 2. While-Watching Activities

 While-Watching Activity – Sample Responses

1. Opening Scene
Saleem’s voiceover links his birth to India’s independence at the stroke of midnight. This conflation suggests that his personal fate mirrors the fate of the nation — both are products of the same historical moment, and both will be equally fractured and contested.

2. Saleem & Shiva’s Birth Switch

• Biological: Saleem is born to poor parents but raised in a wealthy family; Shiva is the reverse.

• Social: Saleem gains privilege and education; Shiva grows up in hardship, becoming tough and resentful.

• Political: Saleem embodies the idealistic, pluralistic vision of India; Shiva represents militant nationalism and raw power. Their swapped lives show that identity is not fixed but shaped by circumstance.

3. Saleem’s Narration
Saleem admits to mixing fact with imagination, often interrupting himself or correcting timelines. This metafictional approach makes the audience aware that history is subjective and can be “re-written” depending on who tells it.

4. Emergency Period Depiction
The Emergency is shown as a time of authoritarian control — forced sterilization of the Midnight’s Children, censorship, and suppression of dissent. The film critiques post-independence democracy for failing to protect individual freedoms.

5. Use of English/Hindi/Urdu
Phrases like “arre baba” and “lathi-stick” mix local languages with English. This creates a rhythm and texture that reflects India’s multilingual reality and rejects the purity of “standard” English, making it a truly Indian medium.

 3. Post-Watching Activities 

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

 Group 1: Hybridity and Identity

• Analyze how Saleem and Shiva represent hybrid identities — culturally, religiously,politically

• Reflect on how their switching at birth is symbolic of postcolonial dislocation. 

• Reflect on how their switching at birth is symbolic of postcolonial dislocation.   

In Midnight’s Children (the film), hybrid identity is framed less as a source of disorientation and more as a space of creative possibility—a position where multiple worlds can be navigated, blended, and reimagined.

1. Saleem’s Own Mixed Origins

Saleem is born at the exact moment of India’s independence, but also switched at birth, making him biologically from one family and socially from another.

Rather than treating this as a tragedy of mistaken identity, the narrative uses it as a metaphor for **India itself—composed of many “births” at once**: colonial and postcolonial, Hindu and Muslim, privileged and marginalized.

This duality gives Saleem access to experiences across class, religion, and culture, allowing him to act as a witness to multiple versions of the nation’s story.

2. Language as a Playground

Dialogue often blends English with Hindi/Urdu terms (just like Rushdie’s prose), presenting hybridity as linguistic richness rather than impurity.

Instead of awkward code-switching, the shifts feel natural and rhythmic—suggesting that hybrid identity allows you to move fluidly across languages and worlds.

3. The Midnight’s Children Conference

The telepathic “conference” of children born at the stroke of midnight brings together kids from every region, religion, and linguistic group.

Their shared supernatural connection imagines unity without erasing difference—a metaphor for how multiple identities can coexist in harmony.

4. Visual Storytelling

The film’s set design and costumes layer Mughal, colonial, and modern elements side by side.

This isn’t shown as a clash—it’s a textured, multi-layered reality where the old and new, foreign and local, stand together.

5. Resistance to Purity Narratives

Characters who insist on pure identities—whether religious nationalism, class segregation, or colonial nostalgia—are often portrayed as rigid, limited, and politically dangerous.

Hybrid identity, by contrast, is associated with adaptability, survival, and a broader perspective.

In short:

The film refuses to frame hybridity as a crisis of belonging. Instead, it presents it as a lens that sees more, feels more, and connects more—a position from which new possibilities for self and nation can emerge. Saleem’s life, messy as it is, becomes proof that being “in-between” is not a deficit but a strength. 

 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?  

In Midnight’s Children, Saleem Sinai’s life unfolds in parallel with key moments in India’s modern history, creating a narrative where the personal and the political are inseparable. He is born at the exact stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947 — the moment of India’s independence — but is switched at birth with Shiva, making his identity both symbolic and unstable from the very beginning. The communal violence and refugee crisis that follow Partition seep into his childhood, shaping his sense of belonging in a newly divided land.

In the 1950s, during the linguistic reorganisation of states, Saleem grows up in multilingual Bombay, discovering his telepathic connection to the other “Midnight’s Children” across the subcontinent. This supernatural link mirrors the diversity and potential unity of the new nation. However, the optimism fades with the Indo–Pak War of 1965, when a bombing in Pakistan kills his family and leaves him with amnesia — a personal loss that parallels the deepening rift between India and Pakistan.

The Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 further complicates his loyalties as he is drawn into the Pakistani army and witnesses displacement and brutality. The Emergency of 1975–77 marks the greatest rupture: the Midnight’s Children are sterilized and silenced, and Saleem’s powers are destroyed, symbolising the repression of India’s pluralism under authoritarian rule. In the years after the Emergency, he reflects on a life marked by dislocation, memory’s unreliability, and fractured identities — a mirror of the disillusionment that followed independence.

Reflection: Is “India” coherent or fragmented in the film?

In the film, “India” appears fragmented rather than fully coherent. Saleem’s life is a microcosm of the nation’s turbulent history — every personal milestone coincides with political upheaval, migration, or violence. The Midnight’s Children conference initially imagines a unified, plural India, but state repression during the Emergency dismantles this vision.

The narrative and visuals emphasize hybridity, cultural layering, and shifting allegiances. “India” is shown less as a seamless whole and more as a patchwork of overlapping identities, stitched together but constantly under strain. Coherence exists as an aspiration — a dream glimpsed in moments of connection — but the lived reality remains fractured, contested, and in flux.

Group 3: Chutnification of English

• Discuss Rushdie’s deliberate subversion of “standard” English.

• Reflect on terms like chutnification, pickling, and linguistic mixing.

• Debate: Is English still a colonial language, or is it now Indian?

Creative Task:

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.

Rushdie’s Subversion of Standard English
Salman Rushdie reshapes English to reflect Indian realities, rejecting the neutral “Queen’s English” for a vibrant, hybrid style. Through chutnification (blending English with Hindi/Urdu terms), pickling (preserving memory in altered, spiced form), and linguistic mixing, he turns a colonial language into an Indian one.

Debate: While English in India began as a colonial imposition, Rushdie’s work shows it can now be a local medium — owned, adapted, and infused with Indian cadence. Yet, it still privileges certain social groups, keeping the debate open.

Creative Task: Chutnified Passage & Translation

Original Passage (Midnight’s Children):

“The police came. Amina reported what was missing: a silver spittoon encrusted with lapis lazuli; gold coins; bejewelled samovars and silver tea-services; the contents of a green tin trunk. Servants were lined up in the hall and subjected to the threats of Inspector Johnny Vakeel. ‘Come on, own up now’—lathi-stick tapping against his leg—‘or you’ll see what we can’t do to you. You want to stand on one leg all day and night? You want water thrown over you, sometimes boiling hot, sometimes freezing cold? We have many methods in the Police Force…’”

How Rushdie Chutnifies English Here:

• Untranslated cultural terms: spittoon, samovar, lathi-stick, Vakeel root the passage in Indian life.

• Code-switch in tone: Inspector’s threats echo subcontinental policing styles, using repetition and sensory extremes.

• Hybrid naming: “Johnny” (Anglo) + “Vakeel” (Urdu/Hindi for lawyer) creates a colonial-postcolonial fusion.

Translated into “Standard” English:

“The police arrived. Amina listed the stolen items: a silver vessel decorated with blue gemstones; gold coins; ornate teapots and silver tea sets; the contents of a green metal trunk. The servants were gathered in the hall and threatened by Inspector Johnny Vakeel. ‘Confess now,’ he said, tapping his baton against his leg, ‘or you will face punishment. Would you like to stand on one leg for hours? Would you like scalding or ice-cold water poured over you? The police force has many methods.’”

What’s Lost in Translation:
The translation flattens the cultural specificity. Words like lathi-stick and samovar are replaced by generic “baton” and “teapot,” erasing their historical and sensory richness. The rhythm of the inspector’s speech becomes more bureaucratic and less menacing. The hybrid texture — part English, part Indian — is replaced with uniform English, losing the sense of place, class, and lived colonial legacy.

References:

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

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

• Mendes, Ana Cristina & Kuortti, Joel. “Padma or no Padma” (2016)

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

Thank You!!!