Salman Rushie has, over the course of the past year, become something of a man after my heart. By this I mean a kindred mind, someone I've come to admire for the perspective he provides and how he presents it, be it in novels like Midnight's Children or in essays like "Is Nothing Sacred?". In realizing this growing admiration I've also realized something else; what I respect in Rushdie is very similar to the elements that lead me to respect another character in history who shares a common ancestry as well as regional affiliation.
Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar was the third Moghul emperor. For those unfamiliar, the Moghuls were the dominant power in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan for the centuries prior to British occupation. They were responsible for much of the architecture associated with northern India today, namely the Taj Mahal. Akbar the Great, as he has come to be called, stands out in this empire's history not for his great conquests; although he did have them; but because during his reign he invoked a degree of religious toleration, co-operation, and harmony the likes of which had not been seen before him. Akbar not only managed to convince the innumerable religious sects and factions of the indus value to co-exist (islam, hindu, christianity, judaism, jainism, sikh, sufi, buddhism, and zoroastrianism were all represented) but took the effort to learn and argue with all representative leaders of each faith so as to learn from them as well.
Rushdie, whose legacy is born in the region of Kashmiir connecting him to the Moghuls, has proven to have acquired a bit of this inheritance from Akbar. In works like "Is Nothing Sacred?" he argues the notion that asserting the fundamental truths of one set of language; such as it contains and determines the beliefs and experiences of one group over another, as a prime set of such is folly; that the modern condition is the rejection of totalized explanations. Thus matters dictated by language, such as religion, should be held as private matters. In a way what he is arguing is similar to what Akbar argued years ago. "Now it has become clear to me, that it cannot be wisdom to assert the truth of one faith over another. In our troubled world so full of contradictions, the wise person makes justice his guide and learns from all. Perhaps in this way the door may be opened again whose key has been lost." Such was an accounted quote in the Akbarnama, a work that was something of an autobiography by the emperor.
So, in a sense, Rushdie is arguing for a notion of cosmopolitanism that isn't rooted in Western thinking.
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