History and language

In the Moor's Last Sigh, Salman Rushdie indulges in reinterpreting history of the Orient and altering/inverting the history of Europe. He does so by establishing a firm link between the East and the (West) European voyagers during the Age of Discovery through the introduction of Da Gama's family/descendants in Cochin, the place where the European and the Indian merchants first interacted. At certain points, Rushdie changes the focus of the narrative from myth and fantasy to a greater political commentary on India and the European explorations in Asia. 

"I repeat: the pepper if you please, for if it had not been for peppercorns, then what is ending now in East and West might never have begun" (4).

"...we were "not so much sub-continent as sub-condiment" ... From the beginning, what the world wanted from bloody mother India was daylight clear... "They came for the hot stuff." (4-5)

The dominant European narrative of civilizing the orient through colonization is clearly being mocked here. Rushdie reduces and simplifies the grand historical narrative of colonization to greed, a mere quest for spices and material objects. He also takes a few jabs at the European explorers and calls into question the entire idea of 'discovering India'. He unveils some important questions regarding Europe's interaction with India. Was India really undiscovered before the Europeans came? Is it fair for history to disregard India's time before the Europeans ventured there? India existed, it was real, it didn't need to be discovered; it was already there. 

"Pepper it was that brought Vasco da Gama's tall ships across the ocean, from Lisbon's Tower of Belem to the Malabar Coast: first to Calicut and later, for its lagoony harbour, to Cochin. English and French sailed in the wake of that first-arrived Portugee, so that in the period called Discovery-of-India -- but how could we be discovered when we were not covered before?" 

Rushdie also attempts to 'Indianize' the English language. He tries to conquer it and make it his own, perhaps in order to alienate the British from their own language. 

"Oho-ho, girl, what a shock you gave, one day you will killofy my heart" (8).

Rushdie, in "Imaginary Homelands", stresses that "... we can't simply use the language in the way the British did; that it needs remaking for our own purpose... To conquer English may be to complete the process of making ourselves free" (17).

This particular idea makes one question post-colonial India's freedom. We are still under the chains of certain colonial institutions such as the English language. Freedom can only be achieved through two measures, which both exist at opposite ends of the spectrum. We could reject the English language completely. Disown it, disregard it. Or we can conquer it. I feel that there is no middle ground. Conquering the English language, for me, has a pronounced resonance with colonial revenge. The idea of taking something from the colonizer, consciously alienating them from something that is their own sounds a little vindictive in nature. Perhaps that's what it is for Rushdie; colonial revenge.