Idea of Corruption in Moor's Last Sigh

At the beginning of chapter three Moor uses the phrase “– a defilement – had begun” to describe his experience in the prison. But the word defilement – which implies a certain corruption – constitutes a double meaning in the text that follows after it and the use of the word almost works as a foreshadowing on Rushdie’s part.

At one hand we see Raman fielding as a fundamentalist figure who is bent on re-writing the history of Bombay by trying to mono-vocalize its religious discourse and making uniform its social-political culture. His motive thus, is to purify Bombay from its multicultural tradition which fostered over the years as a consequence of the British toleration to it. Fielding’s ideas are clear: “He was against ‘immigrants’ to the city…and in favour of its ‘natural residents’… [And] against the corruption of the Congress”.

But Raman Fielding’s purification is Rushdie’s corruption which exists as a destruction of a diverse and a pluralistic Bombay with people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds. My point is perhaps that to Rushdie this fundamentalism and the attempt at reconstruction of Bombay is also a corruption of the original city which, was pure, inclusive and now resides in the past. He views the present Bombay as being more problematic and in a state of corruption (as opposed Fielding’s idea that Bombay of old was dishonorable and morally depraved) and hence carefully using the term defilement.