Hegemonic Powers: A Post-colonial Study of Midnight’s Children

Abstract

In the period of the Renaissance, British trade flourished and reached its zenith with the outward expansion of colonialism. Britain dominated the nineteenth century, but after the world wars, colonial power could neither exert the mode of control necessary to maintain its hold over the territories overseas nor morally justify its colonial hold on these territories. In the 1950s, the colonised nations vigorously asserted themselves, and as a result, colonialism began to decline. Consequently, these marginalised civilisations resisted colonial exploitation and subjugation. The Western ideology in the last few centuries has shown an additional existential interest in Indian religion, art, culture and philosophy. Colonialism as a state of mind remains even after the formal ending of the British Raj, as the ideology of the Indian people is still triumphant in the past. It still haunts the present, and the post-colonial natives try to escape from the past. Now these natives want to create a space for themselves. The oppressed subjects of the post-colonial world try to get rid of the hangover of the colonial past and thus want to realise the present world themselves. The oppressed subjects of the colonial world were treated cruelly and exploited by the imperial structures of power. The present paper tries to critically explore hegemonic power structures in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children.