23 pages • 46 minutes read
Salman RushdieGood Advice is Rarer than Rubies
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Geographical Context: The Partition of India
The United Kingdom signed the Indian Independence Act in 1947, granting India independence and separating what was previously British India into two countries: India and Pakistan. Besides dividing provinces from one another, the partition also divided two provinces internally: Bengal and Punjab. This decision threatened to make members of various religious groups minorities in the newly established regions and so sparked one of the largest mass migrations seen in history. As Muslims made their way west to Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs made their way to India, violence erupted and millions were massacred. The bloodiest of these attacks occurred around the newly erected borders in the Bengal and Punjab provinces.
The exodus of the British Raj and subsequent partitioning of India forever transformed the people impacted by each event, and Rushdie often explores these consequences in his writing. Though Pakistan is never referenced in the narrative, Rushdie mentions the cities Lahore, Multan, and Bahawalpur, all of which are in the West Punjab province in Pakistan. Implicitly, the story unfolds against this backdrop of division, migration, and upheaval, laying the groundwork for its exploration of Colonialism’s Displacements and Destabilizations.
Authorial Context: Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born, British American writer best known for his novels Midnight’s Children (1981), which won a series of awards (including the Best of the Booker prize in 1993 and 2008), and The Satanic Verses (1988). The Satanic Verses is the subject of great controversy among many Islamic groups because of its description of the prophet Muhammad—in particular, its incorporation of a legend claiming that certain possible verses of the Quran were dictated to Muhammad not by God (as Islam maintains of the Quran broadly) but by the devil. In 2005, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah, issued a fatwa (a legal ruling on Islamic law) ordering Rushdie’s execution.
Rushdie’s works traverse a multiplicity of geographical landscapes, all of which have been impacted by colonial rule. These landscapes shape Rushdie’s characters; in fact, Midnight’s Children begins at the exact moment India is freed from British rule—a moment that also coincides with the birth of its protagonist. The fates of the man and the country prove intertwined, and this allegorical bent characterizes much of Rushdie’s work. Miss Rehana’s interactions with Muhammad Ali and the British Consulate, for example, not only comment on postcolonial power dynamics but allegorize the process of securing independence.
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By Salman Rushdie
