Film Screening—Deepa Mehta's Midnight's Children

 This Blog on Film screening Deepa Mehta's Midnight's children assigned by Dr Dilip Barad Sir, for more information about blog task Click here.

Pre-viewing Activities 

1. Who narrates history?

In most official accounts, history is authored by those in positions of power, who shape events to affirm their authority and suppress inconvenient truths. This process often silences marginalized voices, leaving their experiences absent from the collective record. In Midnight’s Children, however, Saleem Sinai disrupts this pattern by narrating history from the perspective of the displaced, the overlooked, and the forgotten. His personal and subjective retelling underscores that memory — particularly the memory of the marginalized — serves as a vital counterpoint to state-sanctioned narratives. By reclaiming history for those excluded from the official record, such storytelling restores agency and challenges the hegemony of “victor’s history.”

2. What makes a nation?

A nation cannot be reduced merely to geographic boundaries, governance systems, or political institutions. Rather, it is constituted through an intricate interplay of cultures, religions, languages, and shared memories. Midnight’s Children portrays India as a mosaic — a patchwork quilt of diverse and often contradictory elements that coexist in tension and harmony. These differences are bound together by collective experiences, both traumatic and celebratory, that create a shared sense of belonging. Thus, nationhood is less a fixed, monolithic construct and more an evolving narrative shaped by the intersections of identity, memory, and lived history.

3. Can language be decolonized?

Language, like territory, can be both colonized and reclaimed. English in India began as a tool of imperial power, designed to privilege an elite minority and marginalize indigenous tongues. Yet, over time, it has been reshaped into a hybridized medium of local expression. Salman Rushdie’s “chutnification” of English exemplifies this transformation: by blending Indian idioms, culinary metaphors, and vernacular rhythms into the colonizer’s tongue, he creates a linguistic form that is at once subversive and distinctly local. This process is not merely a stylistic innovation but an act of political resistance, dismantling the linguistic dominance of colonial English and reasserting cultural ownership.

 2. While-Watching Activities

Opening Scene

The film begins with Saleem’s voiceover (narrated by Rushdie himself), which deliberately links his personal birth to the birth of the nation. This purposeful merging highlights the central metaphor: personal identity and national identity are deeply interconnected, each shaping and influencing the other.

Saleem and Shiva’s Birth Switch

In Midnight's children exchanging Saleem and Shiva at birth creates a complex and layered blending of identities that continues to shape the course of their lives. Biologically, each boy inherits the genetic heritage intended for the other, creating an inherent disconnection between origin and upbringing. Socially, Saleem, though born into poverty, is raised in an environment of comfort and privilege, while Shiva, despite being born into affluence, grows up facing the hardships of poverty. Politically, this seemingly private act becomes a quiet yet powerful form of resistance against rigid class structures, disrupting the expected social order. By altering their destinies, Mary’s intervention symbolically mirrors the instability and fluidity of postcolonial India, where colonial disruptions had already dismantled traditional hierarchies. This intertwined fate of the two boys reflects Homi Bhabha’s notion of the “Third Space,” a zone where identity is neither fixed nor singular but is continually negotiated within the overlapping realms of culture, history, and social forces, resulting in hybrid selves that challenge clear-cut divisions of lineage and privilege.

Narration

The film employs a striking metafictional technique in which Salman Rushdie himself serves as the narrator, giving voice to Saleem’s life story. This narrative choice deliberately blurs the boundaries between the author, the narrator, and the central character, creating a layered storytelling experience. By drawing attention to the act of narration, the film invites the audience to reflect on the constructed nature of both personal memory and historical record. This self-awareness also prompts viewers to question the reliability of the account being presented, highlighting how stories—whether personal or national—are often shaped by perspective, bias, and selective recollection.

The Emergency

The portrayal of India’s 1975–77 Emergency period under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi serves as a sharp political commentary. The film depicts the suspension of democratic rights, widespread censorship, and the coercive sterilization campaigns that marked this era. Through these events, it underscores the vulnerability of democratic institutions in post-independence India. The Emergency becomes a reminder that the abuse of power can erode freedoms, silence opposition, and suppress diversity, thus replicating patterns of authoritarian control reminiscent of the colonial period.

Language

A notable feature of the film is its fluid movement between English, Hindi, and Urdu, sometimes within the same conversation. This multilingual interplay reflects India’s complex linguistic identity, shaped by both its colonial past and its vibrant cultural heritage. The practice of code-switching here is not merely a stylistic choice but a political one—it resists the idea of English as a rigid, foreign language and instead reclaims it as part of a living, hybrid cultural expression.

Post-Viewing Activities