Saleem Sinai Saleem Sinai Saleem Sinai is the protagonist of the Booker Prize-winning novel "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie. His life is closely intertwined with the events that take place in his homeland of pre- and post-colonial India, and newly created Pakistan and Bangladesh (East Bengal). He is born at the moment in time when India and Pakistan emerge from British rule and lives during the new tumultuous struggles that engulf the new nations following 15 August 1947. Sinai embodies these physical struggles and rifts during, and serves as a metaphor for, the spiritual, religious, political and intellectual traumas of the young
Salman Rushdie suspending the redoubtable Gita Sahgal for the crime of going public with her concerns. Gita Sahgal is a woman of immense integrity and distinction... It is people like Gita Sahgal who are the true voices of the human rights movement; Amnesty and Begg have revealed, by their statements and actions, that they deserve our contempt. Rushdie supported the election of Democrat Barack Obama for the American presidency and has often criticized the Republican Party. In Indian politics, Rushdie has criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party and its Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Rushdie was involved in the Occupy Movement, both as a