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| Home > Book Reviews of Literary icons > Shalimar the Clown
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| | Shalimar the Clown
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 Rushdie`s `Shalimar the Clown`, the multi-layered story winds its way geographically from America to Europe, to Kashmir and back to America while in time it moves from the present to the past and back to the present. The seemingly irresolvable tangle of love and hatred motivating the actions of individuals as well as of groups of people sworn to enforce their own version of racial and religious truth on others give rise to a truly global scenario of violence and terrorism that has characterized Nazism in the past as much as it does the ongoing conflict in Kashmir. Rushdie`s sombre story of the Muslim Shalimar and his Hindu wife Boonyi, French-born American Max Ophuls and his English wife Margaret and Max and Booniy`s American-Indian daughter Kashmira or India reminds us of The Moor`s Last Sigh (1995) with its pessimistic outlook into the future, yet a future that in this novel encompasses much more than the fate of an Indian family. A parallel though can be drawn between the inextricable convolutions of personal passions and political and ideological convictions that drive people on in both novels. This holds true in particular of Shalimar`s actions that are motivated not so much by his own and his Muslim conspirators` ambition to free Kashmir from Indian rule and set up a Muslim state but from his desire to revenge Booniy`s betrayal of leaving him, of becoming Max`s lover and the mother of their child.
I believe that it is precisely Rushdie`s intention to unmask man`s lust for power that motivates the main agents on three continents and in different historical periods to perpetrate inhuman atrocities: the Nazis in occupied France who succeed in eradicating the Jewish community including Max`s family; the Indian military in Kashmir who suspect anyone to side with their adversaries, that is, several Muslim guerrilla parties, who in turn do not only fight the unbelievers from outside but also each other and even kill civilians they suspect to support `the others`; and finally, those hard-core, totally non-political criminals in California whom the authorities can hardly keep in check. Violence though is legitimate in the case of Nazi terrorism, as Max`s involvement in La Rιsistance in France proves; not however any longer in the self-opinionated and factional power game in Kashmir, and certainly not at all in Shalimar`s personal revenge. He murders Booniya, sent back to Kashmir where she is ousted by her family and lives in isolation, traces and kills Max in Los Angeles and finally confronts Kashmira/India in her father`s house. Being all set to defend herself the outcome of their encounter remains as open-ended as the Kashmir conflict.
Like its tightrope dancing protagonist, Shalimar the Clown presents us with a world dancing on the rope and threatening to plunge to its death. It is a world in which terrorist acts in India form but part of a conflict that has assumed global dimension. As national boundaries do not any longer count, the writers` responsibility and courage are asked for to respond to the frightening international scenario of terrorism that has begun to affect the lives of more and more people at the beginning of the 21st century.
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