ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the paradigm of space and identity in two Indian-English novels, Kim and Midnight's Children written by two writers from two different geographical spaces, but whose common playground is India, the colonial space. While Kipling's Kim is a late nineteenth century novel fully concerned with the mechanics of ruling an Empire, and eludes the conflicts between Indians and British, Rushdie's Midnight's Children deconstructs and reconstructs India's recent past by analyzing postcolonial issues such as identity, cultural formation, the loss of the self and the difficulty of assuming one's historical past. Whereas Kipling's novel is a political romance that hides British anxiety of the collapse of an overseas power, Rushdie's novel is a post-independence version of Kipling's Kim that responds to the dominant master discourses of imperial Europe. However, both Indian – English novels as well as their respective hyphenated writers, in their commitment to fantasy, reveal a hybrid identity to two nations, two spaces, India and England.
