Rushdie uses his protagonist in a
political context to critique elements of post-colonial India that he found
distasteful. The violence Moraes undertakes under the command of Mainduck
becomes symbolic of Rushdie’s pessimism regarding the fundamentalism he
believed had seeped into India. Indeed, the Moor becomes more than just a
political symbol; his “mongrel” (172) status by birth shuns him from the normal
socio-political life of the educated elite he belonged to i.e. “he did not
belong amongst these thoroughbreds” (240), and Rushdie emphasizes that the city
of Bombay too, like Moraes, “had expanded without time for proper planning” (161),
thereby critiquing the deterioration of Bombay with the exit of the colonials.
To further emphasize this point, Rushdie’s protagonist, after suffering a terrible
first encounter in a Bombay Jail laments how the “post-Independence
made-in-India institution” went beyond one’s “worst imaginings” (287).
Rushdie’s purpose in elaborating the
detailed suffering and filth of the Moor’s jail experience is to prepare the
reader for the violent life Moraes later takes us, which becomes a culmination of
all his suffering and repentance of sorts, a fate he embraces “unhesitating” (295).
In fact, the “simplicity” and “straightforwardness” (305) of the brutal work
designated by “little Hitler” (297) gives him an almost strange peace, a peace
absent from his previously confusing and dilemma-stricken existence. Indeed,
his “true self” has been forever hidden in his “deformed limb” (295). Rushdie’s
work contains many political overtones, but his critique is more than just one
on extremist leaders like Mainduck, rather it is almost a lament of the Nations
lost ideals, an inability to stop the “national tragedy” that was occurring on
a “grand scale” (352), in a country which he believes “engineered” its own
demise (372), eliminating the hope of peace the exit of the British had signaled,
and with the Moor becoming symbolic of this fragmentation and violence.
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