Cosmopolitan Conversation In Midnight's Children

When it comes to world culture or cosmopolitan writers,Salman Rushdie,the Indian English novelist quickly comes to the mind.Rich life experiences has endowed Rushdie with a view towards diversified cultures and broad world view,freeing him from the boundaries of Eastern or Western cultures and enabling him to see the world civilization from an objective perspective.Combining Hindi and English,Rushdie transcends the boundary between Eastern and Western cultures.He employs magical realism to reinterpret and reconstruct Indian history and thereby shows his “Third World Cosmopolitanist” spirit.His second novel Midnight's Children won the Bookers Prize in 1981.This thesis aims to analyze Midnight's Children from a cosmopolitan perspective employing the concept of cosmopolitan conversation of Kwame Anthony Appiah.On a personal and cultural level,the thesis focuses on changing identity of boundary crossing people through cultural interaction,in the process of which individuals in the novel find their identity flexible and themselves more fulfilled with the exposure to other cultural customs.On a national level,the consequence of religious nationalism in Midnight's Children is discussed meanwhile it is revealed that cosmopolitan conversation is conducted as people approach otherness and actively build bridges among different beliefs.Internationally,the thesis explores injustice in Indian subcontinent,disclosing that tolerance and respect for difference are required in approaching otherness.In the end,some limitations in Rushdie's Cosmopolitanism is revealed.The thesis believes that the philosophy of cosmopolitan conversation advocated in Midnight's Children transcend the conflicts among religion and politics,making a harmonious multicultural and multireligious society possible.