Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 69
69 C H A P T E R T E N : S A L M A N R US H DI E - A BR I E F L I F E -S K E T C H Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay, India in June 1947, two months before Indian Independence which led to the creation of the separate Muslim state of Pakistan. His paternal grandfather, Khaliqui Dehlavi, was a doctor and successful businessman in Old Delhi. He was a minor essayist in Urdu and a patron of poets. Dehlavi elected to rename himself Rushdie’ after an intellectual Arab philosopher he admired. Perhaps the name contained a prophesy, for the Arab philosopher was in Salman’s own words ‘out of step with orthodoxy’. (Waterstone’s magazine, Autumn 1995 p. 7). Salman Rushdie’s maternal grandparents, Attaullah and Ameer Butt, were Kashmiri Muslims. His father, Anis, is described by Salman as ‘a tragic figure, the only son of a rich man, he spent his life losing the money. ’ (WM p. 7). Salman was brought up in Bombay in an Anglo-phile, Anglo- centric way. Due to his fair complexion he looked white to most of his compatriots. ‘He was,’ as Phillip Howard, literary editor of The Times says, ‘the wrong colour and the wrong religion and the wrong class in the wrong country. ’ (The Times, 15 February 1989). When Salman Rushdie was 13, his father sent him to Rugby in England to further his education. Rushdie met discreet English racialism for the first time and realised that he was considered not so much a person as an Indian. When he finished he begged his parents to let him return to India. But he had won an exhibition to Cambridge, and they insisted that he go. Cambridge at least was a success for him. He read history, and with a particular interest he read books that were banned in Islam.