Worksheet: Film Screening-Deepa Mehta's Midnight's Children

 This task is given by Dilip Barad Sir, Teacher's Blog link

This blog is based on the film screening of Midnight’s Children – as a part of worksheet on cinematic adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Booker Prize-winning novel.

1. Before the Screening – Framing the Inquiry

Before entering the world of Saleem Sinai, it’s important to consider some foundational questions:

Who shapes history — the ruling power or those pushed to its margins?

Official histories often come from the perspective of the powerful, leaving alternative memories suppressed. In Midnight’s Children, Saleem’s personal history resists this authority by blending his private experiences with national events.

What binds a nation together — territory, governance, shared culture, or collective memory?

Rushdie’s narrative suggests that memory, even when fragmented or contested, is the glue that makes a nation more than a political map.

Can English be remade into an Indian language?

Introduced under colonial rule, English was a tool of power, yet post-independence writers have infused it with local idioms, rhythms, and expressions. Rushdie’s “chutnification” transforms it into a vehicle of self-expression rooted in Indian realities.

2. Observations During the Screening

Nation and Self in Saleem’s Storytelling

From his first words — born at midnight on India’s independence — Saleem positions his life as intertwined with the nation’s destiny. The film weaves his personal milestones with historical events, showing how individual identity is inseparable from political and cultural transformations.

The Birth Swap and the Nature of Hybridity

Mary Pereira’s decision to switch two newborns — Saleem and Shiva — is the central metaphor for hybrid identity.Biological hybridity: Heritage and upbringing no longer align.Social hybridity: Class position is exchanged, altering worldviews and opportunities.Political hybridity: The boys come to represent opposing visions of India — one marked by pluralism, the other by aggression.

Unreliable Narration

Saleem’s storytelling is self-conscious and openly flawed — dates blur, details shift, and exaggerations appear. This reminds us that history is not fixed truth but a constructed narrative, echoing postcolonial challenges to the idea of “objective” history.

The Emergency as a Political Turning Point

The depiction of the 1975–77 Emergency highlights how democratic institutions can be undermined from within. Forced sterilizations and displacements in the film are personal tragedies and political commentary, revealing that postcolonial governance can reproduce authoritarian practices.

Language as a Site of Cultural Transformation

Switches between English, Hindi, and Urdu throughout the film dramatize the “chutnification” of English. This linguistic hybridity resists the purity of colonial language and mirrors the cultural blend of postcolonial India.

3. Post-Viewing Reflections

The intertwined lives of Saleem and Shiva embody cultural, religious, and political hybridity:Cultural: Class background and lived experience shape identities beyond birth.Religious: Upbringing and heritage cross communal boundaries, questioning rigid divides.Political: Contrasting visions of the nation emerge from differing social realities.

The birth swap is symbolic of colonial disruptions — arbitrary reassignments of identity and belonging. Like the redrawing of borders under empire, it uproots the “natural” order, forcing individuals to navigate identities shaped by forces beyond their control.

Homi Bhabha’s “Third Space” is evident here: both Saleem and Shiva inhabit an in-between space where no single identity fits entirely. This liminality becomes a place where old categories collapse, and new, hybrid possibilities emerge.

Reflective Blog: Belonging, Language, and Fractured Identities in a Postcolonial Nation

Growing up in a nation long shaped by colonial rule often means embracing a language not of collective origin. English, the tongue of erstwhile rulers, becomes simultaneously a gateway to global discourse and a reminder of fractured histories. In Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie gives voice to this paradox, offering insight into how national and personal identity intertwine in the postcolonial moment.

Saleem Sinai—born literally at the stroke of Indian independence—serves as both protagonist and allegory. His fractured identity, hybrid origins, and magical-political powers embody India's pluralistic yet divided nationhood. Rushdie’s narrative style, infused with magical realism and what he calls the “chutnification” of English, breaks linguistic and historical conventions, asserting a uniquely postcolonial voice. This linguistic mingling undermines the purity of colonial language and reasserts local identity on the global stage.

Saleem’s journey mirrors the trajectory of India itself—full of hope at birth, later marked by conflicts, betrayals, and disillusionment. The personal and political are inseparable, and his life becomes a metaphor for the struggles of a young nation navigating its postcolonial identity. To speak in the colonizer’s tongue is, for Saleem and many others, both a necessity and an opportunity: a necessity because English is the language of administration, education, and global connection; an opportunity because it can be reshaped, infused with native idioms and rhythms, to tell stories that the colonizers never imagined.

Deepa Mehta’s film adaptation further visualizes this entanglement. Through lush cinematography and a shifting narrative timeline, the film portrays India’s transition from colonial rule through the lens of Saleem’s fragmented life. The camera lingers on moments of both unity and division, highlighting that national identity is not a single, unified narrative but rather a complex weave of conflicting threads. The departing colonial figure William Methwold stands as a reminder that independence did not erase the structures, languages, and mindsets inherited from colonialism.

To belong in a postcolonial nation is to live with inherited divisions—of religion, region, language, and class—and to navigate a public language that is both inherited and reimagined. Speaking in English does not erase these fractures; instead, it becomes a medium in which they can be expressed, negotiated, and perhaps transformed. Rushdie’s “chutnified” English captures the sounds, smells, and contradictions of postcolonial life, turning a symbol of imperial dominance into a tool for self-definition.

This dual identity—the simultaneous burden of history and potential for creative expression—is central to postcolonial belonging. Pride and alienation coexist, as Saleem’s voice feels both intimately Indian and conscious of English literary traditions. The act of telling his story in English becomes an assertion of ownership: a declaration that the language of the colonizer can carry the pulse of a newly independent nation.

In conclusion, Midnight’s Children reveals that belonging to a postcolonial nation entails negotiating a voice that is both inherited and reinvented. Language becomes a site of resistance and renewal. At once fractured and whole, identity in a postcolonial context is an ongoing conversation—across time, histories, and selves.

References:

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. Routledge, 2006

Mehta, Deepa, director. Midnight's Children. Hamilton-Mehta Production, 2012

Rushdie, Salman. Midnight's Children. Jonathan Cape,1981.