The Challenges of Multiculturalism in India: Analyzing Sidhwa and Rushdie Anonymous College

Cosmopolitanism is defined in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as “the idea that all human beings, regardless of their political affiliation, are (or can and should be) citizens in a single community”. This belief not only applies to political affiliation but also to religious beliefs, which, in the case of the formation of India and Pakistan, proves to be a difficult challenge to overcome. The utopian ideal of cosmopolitanism is addressed in both Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel, Cracking India, and Salman Rushdie’s, The Moor’s Last Sigh. Both novels discuss the difficulty with nation building in India and Pakistan after the departure of the English. Cosmopolitanism is addressed by both narrators in similar ways. Through both novels, one can see major challenges in the implementation of this ideology. These challenges include a lack of identity, a holding on to previous loyalties to political and religious parties, and the violence that ensues when unity is severed.

A cosmopolite is a citizen of the world, in the sense that they do not necessarily belong to a certain nation, religion, or political party, but to the human species itself. This leads to an identity problem when self-proclaimed cosmopolitans realize that those who do...