Double Bind of History and Fiction in Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown

Abstract

The present researcher attempts to show that Salman Rushdie rewrites Kashmiri history from the marginalized people’s perspective since he thinks that the of ficially-approved monolithic history cannot present the embedded socio-political, religio-cultural ambience of the contemporary society. Rather, he thinks that this officially recorded history assiduously supports the elite people, who are in power and their culture to maintain their ‘status quo’ by creating certain discourse. Thus, the present researcher, in this dissertation, attempts to expose the socio-historical context and fictional elements that are going simultaneously and concomitantly to exhume the marginalized and underprivileged unsung histories like that of Shalimar and Kashmira. To reinforce the cultural and religious amity by creating humanity, fraternity,brotherhood among the people from different cultures, religions, and nationalities, Rushdie by deploying allegorical mode of writing, myth, circular plot and so on valorizes the sentiments of those underprivileged people whose voice cannot be heard in the official or mainstream history.