Methodical Worlds: Partition, Secularism, and Communalism in India

Saleem Sinai, the protagonist of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, was the bastard offspring of a one-shot encounter between a departing Britisher, William Methwold (last of a line of angrezi robber barons), and Vanita, wife of a poor Maharashtrian accordionist--a proletarian Mumbaikar given to singing maudlin Broadway hits in the homes of the rich to earn his supper. seductive allure of Methwold rose largely from the clean-cut parting that ran through the middle of his brilliantined hair. Hypnotized by its clarity and metric precision, Vanita, like many another Indian in Methwold's circle, succumbed to his charm. As the sun set on August 14, 1947, over Methwold's estate on Malabar Hills, Bombay, and Vanita went into an excruciating labor that would produce…