Rushdie and Mother India

The men in Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh range from the slightly absurd to the downright nonsensical. Francisco, Aurora’s father, built a ‘Western’ house and an ‘Eastern’ house in his backyard and forced his family to move from one to the other constantly. His second son, Camoens is less bold but Rushdie does not hesitate to paint him in an equally ridiculous light. Camoens fancies himself a bit of revolutionary, a ‘Leninist’ who managed to offend Lenin himself and who, when arrested by the local authorities’, cried out ‘We shall administer the country, whatever you say now!’ only to be slapped by one of his own ‘countrymen’ Despite their books and high thoughts, the men of the family are neither visionaries nor revolutionaries. In this particular scene, Aires and Camoens are arrested by Englishmen that they know socially and it is these men they now rail against, seeing them as the enemy. It is clear then that they are not sure what they stand for, who to fight for or, even who their enemies are.

Camoens eventually drowns himself (as his father did before him) when a drunk woman at a party insults him. ‘They dove into the black night-harbour and swam out to the mother-ocean’ His death can be seen as Camoens giving up (it can be argued that he gave up before he’d even started but then again, it is clear that Camoens is incapable of fighting for anything real) The mother-ocean claims him –another powerful image that reminds us of references to mother India as well as the idea of a mother figure smothering her son (both connotations are extremely relevant to this work)

But the true visionaries of this work are the women-Isabella and Aurora. Aurora’s first painting is enough to confirm this (upon seeing it Camoens can only hold her and weep)

Mother India is a theme Rushdie plays with constantly. Isabella and Aurora are of course both mothers but they can hardly be called motherly. Rushdie is conscious of the tropes associated with the Orient; sensual and nurturing – characteristics also associated with women. Aurora and Isabella may not be particularly motherly but they are still solidly Indian women. Rushdie’s self indulgent language may fool those who argue that he is simply reinforcing the stereotypes associated with India but considering the female characters in his work the argument could also be made that he is in fact searching for different ways to talk, write and think about ‘Mother India’ Put this way, it then makes perfect sense that the men take a backseat to the women in his novel.