Il bastone del comandante Sabarmati: Salman Rushdie, Saleem Sinai e il processo indiano più famoso del XX secolo

Abstract

The Nanavati case is a crime of passion that shook India between the 50s and the 60s of last century, and culminated in what has been called “the Indian O.J. Simpson trial”. In his masterpiece, Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie refers to it in a chapter titled “Commander Sabarmati’s Baton”. All critics consider it a minor episode in the novel. Yet, Rushdie’s accuracy in anticipating and preparing it, its position in the plot as well as in the protagonist’s life, stress the importance of this case in the novel’s narrative economy. The aim of this essay is to show that the Nanavati/Sabarmati trial is a turning point of the novel, since it marks the end of the protagonist’s childhood, and is one of the most successful examples of Rushdie’s «poetics of crowd».