We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected]
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
This chapter considers the wider contexts of secularism in relation to Salman Rushdie’s novels. It delineates different conceptions of secularism with which Rushdie is preoccupied. Midnight’s Children, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Shalimar the Clown are especially concerned with the notion of the syncretic and secular ideal of the Indian nation, championed by Nehru and the Indian National Congress at independence. It is the concerted dismantling of this postcolonial settlement and the Nehruvian vision of the nation at independence, and the replacement of this founding myth with an exclusionist nationalist narrative, that Rushdie critiques in these novels. This chapter also delineates the wider contexts with which Rushdie engages to chart the decline of Indian secularism and the syncretic concept of the Indian nation. It furthermore considers debates of secularism in relation to western definitions and how these feature in novels such as Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights. These intersections open up complex ideological debates around rationality, faith, and religion, central to much of Rushdie’s works.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.