Rushdie’s narrative form cannot sustain a claim to quintessential Indianness.

Evidence

The forms of narrativization, meanwhile, are diverse enough for critics to conjecture that they belong, in essence, to a generally non-Western, specifically Indian form of non-mimetic narration, derived, finally, from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and exemplifying, in the words of Raja Rao, the characteristically Indian penchant for obsessive digressions and the telling of an interminable tale. This, of course, is Rushdie’s own stance in Midnight’s Children. It has not been possible, though, to sustain this idea of quintessential Indianness in the form of Rushdie’s narrative techniques; the lines of descent from European modernism and postmodernism ·are too numerous. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 491

Categorization

• XREF: Direct evidence for the reader’s thesis: an essentialist self-description (‘Indianness’) collapses under textual scrutiny; the strategic claim cannot be lived in the form. — connects to: Rushdie self-presents his novels as Third World texts. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 491; Rushdie’s class-bounded experience and modernist affiliation form a closed circle excluding heroic action. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 548; Rushdie’s ironic satiric tone smuggles in the metropolis’s own cliches unexamined. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 608 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: Ahmad shows Rushdie’s own ‘quintessential Indianness’ narration claim fails — useful empirical case for whether ironic/strategic essentialist self-location survives close reading.

Broader Connections

• Rushdie’s class-bounded experience and modernist affiliation form a closed circle excluding heroic action. #corroborates (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 548
• Rushdie’s ironic satiric tone smuggles in the metropolis’s own cliches unexamined. #complicates (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 608
• Rushdie self-presents his novels as Third World texts. #corroborates (0.70) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 491