1 I am using the term “communalism” here as Indian scholars do: to talk about loyalty to a particular ethnic group or “community” - partisanship rather than interest in a pan-ethnic collective.

2 Salman Rushdie, The Moor’s Last Sigh, New York: Pantheon, 1995, p. 32. Subsequent references are to this edition and will be cited in the text.

3 For a critique of Rushdie’s politics - particularly the places where his attempts at inclusivity fail - see Gillian Gane, “Migrancy, The Cosmopolitan Intellectual, and the Global City in The Satanic Verses”, Modern Fiction Studies, 48, 1 (2002), 18-49. On a related topic, the vexed and sometimes sexist portrayal of women in Rushdie’s work, see Revathi Krishnaswamy, “Mythologies of Migrancy: Postcolonialism, Postmodernism and the Politics of (Dis)location”, ARIEL, 26 (1995), 125-46, and Harveen Sachdeva Mann, “’Being Borne Across’: Translation and Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses”, Criticism, 37 (1995), 281-308.

4 Timothy Brennan, Salman Rushdie and the Third World, New York: St. Martin’s, 1989, p. 27.

5 “‘Errata’: Or, Unreliable Narration in Midnight’s Children”, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991, New York: Penguin, 1991, pp. 22-5. See also Ronny Noor, “Misrepresentation of History in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children”, Notes on Contemporary Literature, 26 (1996), 7-8, David Lipscomb, “Caught in a Strange Middle Ground: Contesting History in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children”, Diaspora, 2 (1991), 163-89, and Neil Ten Kortenaar, “Midnight’s Children and the Allegory of History”, ARIEL, 26 (1995), 41-62.

6 The city’s name in Marathi and Gujarati is Mumbai, and always has been. Native speakers of Hindi or English would say Bombai. All four languages are plentifully represented among the city’s inhabitants.

7 Nehru condemned India’s “caste and priest-ridden society” and presided over a constitution based on “LIBERTY... EQUALITY... and... FRATERNITY” - ideals which may be universal, but which appear in a familiarly Western phrasing. See Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India, 5th edn., Oxford: OUP, 1997, p. 356.

8 Needless to say the nationalist groups deny this. Bal Thackeray has repeatedly stated that the Shiv Sena welcomes Muslim members - so long, that is, as the Muslims agree with the Sena’s pro-Marathi positions.

9 The city’s own promotional materials of the day highlight Bombay’s status as the country’s test site for industrialization. For a beautiful example of Indian 1950s civic pride, see Directorate of Publicity, Bombay 1956: An Authentic Reference Guide, Bombay: The Government of Bombay, 1956. The Bombay edition of the Times of India contains advertising sections on industrial expansion throughout the 1950s; see, for example, the special section on Industrial Expansion published February 28, 1958, extolling Bombay’s leading position in the country as evidenced by the building of cement factories and the rise of aviation (“Industrial Expansion,” Times of India, 28 February 1958, Bombay edn., Special Section, p. xxi), or that of March 31, 1958, in which the Atlas Cycle Industries Inc. boasts of “A Cycle Every 40 Seconds” (Special Advertising Section, p. 9).

10 This is a deliberately tendentious account of the city’s history. Shiv Sena historians would never class the Marathi-speaking inhabitants of the city as immigrants, on the grounds that while they would have had to relocate to reach the city, they would have remained within territory historically occupied by Marathi-speakers. To the Shiv Sena, only non-Marathi-speakers are immigrants.

11 Sujata Patel, “Preface”, in Sujata Patel and Alice Thorner, eds, Bombay: Metaphor for Modern India, Bombay: OUP, 1996, pp. ix-xii, p. ix.

12 Gillian Tindall, City of Gold: The Biography of Bombay, London: Temple Smith, 1982, p. 125.

13 Sujata Patel, personal interview, 9 June 2003.

14 ibid.

15 Homi Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree outside Delhi, May 1817”, Critical Inquiry, 12, 1 (1985), 144-65.

16 Shanta Gokhale describes English theatre as “a model to be both emulated and abjured”, Gokhale, “Rich Theatre, Poor Theatre” in Bombay: Mosaic of Modern Culture, Bombay: OUP, 1995, pp. 194-209, p. 209.

17 Patel, interview.

18 ibid.

19 Jayant Lele, “Saffronization of the Shiv Sena: The Political Economy of City, State, and Nation” in Bombay: Metaphor for Modern India, Bombay: OUP, 1996, pp. 185-212, p. 190.

20 Vaibhav Purandare, The Sena Story, Bombay: Business Publications, 1999, p. 189.

21 The murder of Communist MLA Krishna Desai on June 5, 1970, for example. Sena Story, p. 141.

22 Gerard Heuze, “Cultural Populism: The Appeal of the Shiv Sena” in Bombay: Metaphor for Modern India, Bombay: OUP, 1996, pp. 213-47, p. 225.

23 The Shiv Sena competes with the Communists for its constituency; their criticisms of the Communists tend to revolve around the failure of the party to deliver improved conditions for the workers.

24 “Saffronization”, p. 202.

25 “Cultural Populism”, p. 236.

26 Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children, New York: Penguin, 1981, p. 263. Subsequent references are to this edition and will be cited in the text.

27 Many critics have ably documented the reflection in the Saleem-Parvati-Shiva triangle the relationships between the divine Shiva, Parvati and Brahma. Timothy Brennan suggests in Salman Rushdie and the Third World that Shiva and Parvati each provide Saleem with “distinct aspects of the national [literary] style” (p. 114); the literary styles (Parvati provides illusion or “fakery” and Shiva “the skills of the sensationalist reporter”) match the characters’ political styles.

28 Thackeray is on record as having said the alarming phrase, “I’m not an advocate of Hitlerism, but... ”, Sena Story, p. 16.

29 The skyscrapers of Cuffe Parade are an infamous example of failed city planning and enforcement. See Sharada Dwivedi and Rahul Mehrotra, Bombay: The Cities Within, Bombay: Eminence Designs Pvt Ltd, 1995, p. 314-16.

30 Patel, interview. 31 Alexandra W. Schultheis, “Postcolonial Lack and Aesthetic Promise in The Moor’s Last Sigh”, Twentieth Century Literature, 47, 4 (2001), 569-96. 32 Fielding is indirectly implicated in Aurora’s death, however: not because he may have murdered her, but because he, like his real-life counterpart, is a promoter of the Ganpati festival, against which Aurora is protesting when she falls from the cliff.

“City of Mongrel Joy”: Bombay and the Shiv Sena in Midnight’s Children and the Moor’s Last Sigh

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