Chutnifying English: Salman Rushdie’s Linguistic Subversion and the Indianisation of English
Introduction: When English Refuses to Remain “English”
Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981) is remarkable not only because it tells the story of India through the life of Saleem Sinai, but also because it changes the very language in which that story is told. Rushdie does not treat English as a fixed, pure, or untouchable linguistic system. Instead, he reshapes it, mixes it with Hindi, Urdu, Hindustani and other linguistic resources, creates new words, alters syntax, uses Indian idioms, and deliberately violates the conventions of “standard” English. His linguistic experimentation therefore becomes an important part of the novel’s postcolonial politics.
The central question, therefore, is not simply whether Rushdie writes “good” or “bad” English. Rather, it is: Who has the authority to decide what counts as correct English? Rushdie’s answer is revolutionary. English may have arrived in India as a colonial language, but once Indian writers began transforming it according to Indian experiences, rhythms and cultural realities, it could no longer remain exclusively the property of England.
This linguistic transformation is often described through Rushdie’s famous idea of “chutnification.” Like chutney, which combines different ingredients to create a new flavour, Rushdie’s English combines different languages and cultural registers to produce a hybrid linguistic form.
Rushdie’s Deliberate Subversion of Standard English
“Standard English” traditionally carries associations of grammatical correctness, linguistic authority, education and institutional power. During colonial rule, English occupied a privileged position in administration, education and political communication. Consequently, mastery of standard English could become a marker of social status.
Rushdie deliberately challenges this hierarchy. Instead of making Indian characters sound as though they have been transported into an English novel and forced to speak the Queen’s English, he allows them to speak in ways that resemble actual Indian linguistic experience.
Thomas explains that Rushdie constructs an “english” different from received standard English by reworking the colonial language according to Indian vocabulary, grammar and syntax. She connects this process with the postcolonial appropriation and reforming of a colonial language.
This is especially visible in the dialogue of Padma, Saleem’s beloved. Padma says:
“Eat, na, food is spoiling.”
The expression is grammatically unusual from the perspective of conventional British English. The word “na” is an Indian conversational marker, while “food is spoiling” reflects the influence of Indian linguistic structures. Padma later says:
“Okay, starve, starve, who cares two pice.”
The repetition of “starve” is also significant. Thomas points out that such repetition is more characteristic of vernacular speech than conventional English.
These are not accidental mistakes. They are artistic choices. Rushdie uses linguistic difference to communicate character, class, education, emotion and cultural background. Saleem’s more formal English contrasts with Padma’s Hinglish. Language therefore becomes a method of characterization.
The important point is that Rushdie does not merely translate Indian speech into English. He recreates Indian speech within English.
“Chutnification”: The Spice of a New English
The word “chutnification” itself is a brilliant example of Rushdie’s linguistic creativity. It combines the Indian word “chutney” with the English suffix “-fication.” Arti Gupta explains that chutney is a tangy Indian preparation that adds flavour to food, and Rushdie transforms the noun “chutney” into “chutnification” to describe the transformation and enrichment of English through Indian elements.
The metaphor is particularly appropriate. Rushdie does not simply insert isolated Indian words into English. He creates a mixture in which the ingredients interact with one another. The result is not exactly British English plus Hindi. It becomes something different.
In Midnight’s Children, Rushdie uses words such as “ekdum,” “angrez,” “nasbandi,” “dhoban,” “baba,” “garam masala,” “rakshasas,” “fauz,” “badmaas,” “jailkhana,” “jalebis,” and “bhel-puri.” These words are not always translated or explained.
This is important because Rushdie refuses to assume that Indian readers need everything translated for the convenience of an imagined Western reader. The Indian word can stand on its own. It does not need to apologize for being Indian.
This is one of the most politically significant aspects of Rushdie’s linguistic strategy. The colonial relationship is partially reversed: instead of Indian culture being translated into an authoritative English framework, English is forced to accommodate Indian cultural realities.
Pickling: Language, Memory and History
The metaphor of pickling is equally important. In Midnight’s Children, Saleem famously associates the preservation of history with the preservation of food. The pickle jar becomes a metaphor for the novel itself: just as ingredients are preserved and transformed through pickling, historical experiences are preserved through narrative.
Saachi Khandeparkar notes Rushdie’s formulation that a pickle jar contains the possibility of the “chutnification of history.”
The connection between pickling and language is profound. Pickling does not simply preserve something exactly as it was. The ingredients undergo transformation. Salt, spices, oil and time alter the original material. Similarly, Saleem does not present history as an objective, untouched record. His memory, language, imagination and personal experiences transform it.
Thus, pickling becomes a metaphor for both history and language.
Rushdie’s English is “pickled” with Indian experiences. British English enters the Indian context, comes into contact with Indian languages and cultural forms, and emerges altered. At the same time, Indian history is “pickled” through Saleem’s highly subjective narrative voice.
This is why Rushdie’s linguistic experimentation cannot be separated from his treatment of history. His unusual English reflects his larger argument that history itself is not a perfectly preserved object. It is reconstructed, remembered, narrated and constantly reshaped.
Linguistic Mixing and Hinglish
One of Rushdie’s most important innovations is his use of Hinglish, a hybrid of Hindi and English. Thomas describes Rushdie’s Hinglish as a pan-Indian linguistic form capable of communicating the worldview and emotions of ordinary Indian characters.
Linguistic mixing is not merely decorative. It represents the multilingual reality of India.
India has never been a linguistically homogeneous society. Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi and numerous other languages coexist with English. In such a context, a completely “pure” English would itself be artificial.
Rushdie therefore creates an English capable of carrying multiple cultural voices.
His linguistic mixing operates at several levels:
First, lexical mixing occurs when Indian words enter English sentences.
Second, syntactic mixing occurs when Indian sentence patterns influence English grammar.
Third, idiomatic mixing occurs when Indian expressions are translated directly or reproduced without explanation.
Fourth, phonetic and conversational mixing appears through repetitions, interjections and speech rhythms.
Fifth, structural experimentation occurs when Rushdie joins words together or invents unusual compounds.
For example, Thomas identifies forms such as “overandover,” “updownup,” “birthanddeath,” “nearlynineyearold,” and “godknowswhat.”
These forms visually disrupt conventional English. Words that would normally remain separate are joined together. The effect is often rapid, breathless and oral. Language begins to resemble thought and speech rather than polished academic prose.
Inventing Words: English as a Creative Material
Rushdie does not merely borrow Indian words. He also creates new words from English itself.
Words such as “chutnification,” “memoryless,” “historyless,” “dupatta-less,” “unbeautiful,” “doctori,” and “sonship” demonstrate what Thomas calls “creative hybridization.”
This demonstrates that Rushdie regards English as a flexible material rather than a finished product.
His approach is almost like that of a cook. He takes an existing linguistic ingredient, combines it with another, changes its form, adds cultural flavour and produces something new.
The metaphor of cooking is especially appropriate because the very word “chutnification” converts culinary transformation into linguistic transformation.
Rushdie also deliberately misspells words such as “unquestionabel,” “straaange,” and “existance,” and uses forms such as “mens,” “lifeliness,” and “informations.” Thomas argues that these deviations can represent Indian everyday uses of English and deliberately challenge conventional grammatical norms.
Therefore, what a traditional grammar teacher might identify as an “error” can become, in literature, an intentional stylistic device.
Slang, Puns and the Refusal to Explain
Rushdie also incorporates slang and culturally specific expressions without constantly translating them for non-Indian readers. His language includes forms such as “funtoosh,” “goo,” “gora,” “zenana,” and others. He also invents expressions such as “other pencil” and “writery.”
This strategy has two effects.
For an Indian reader, such language can create familiarity and recognition. For a non-Indian reader, it creates a sense of linguistic foreignness.
This foreignness is significant. Colonial writing often expected the colonized world to become understandable to the Western reader. Rushdie reverses this expectation. The Western reader must enter the Indian linguistic world rather than expecting India to be completely translated into familiar English.
Meenakshi Mukherjee’s observation, cited by Thomas, is particularly relevant here: Rushdie takes linguistic risks by translating idioms and puns without apology, footnote or glossary.
This refusal to explain everything can therefore be interpreted as an act of linguistic confidence.
Is English Still a Colonial Language?
The question “Is English still a colonial language?” does not have a simple yes-or-no answer.
Historically, English was undoubtedly a colonial language in India. It arrived through British expansion and became deeply connected with colonial administration, education and power. English was used as a means of governance and institutional control. The history of English in India therefore cannot be separated from colonialism.
But language does not remain permanently owned by the people who originally introduced it.
Once English entered India, Indians began adapting it. Indian writers used it to represent Indian landscapes, characters, social structures and cultural experiences. The process began before Rushdie with writers such as Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and R.K. Narayan.
Gupta observes that earlier Indian writers experimented with diction, dialogue and syntax and introduced Indian imagery, thought and vernacular rhythms into English.
Rushdie takes this process further. Rather than simply using English to describe India, he makes English itself experience India.
That is the crucial difference.
English as an Indian Language
Can we therefore call English an Indian language?
In a cultural and literary sense, increasingly, yes.
There is a danger in celebrating Indian English so enthusiastically that the unequal history behind its arrival is forgotten. English continues to possess institutional power in India. It can provide access to higher education, employment, administration and international communication. At the same time, unequal access to English can reproduce social and class divisions.
Therefore, English in India has a double identity.
It is both a language with a colonial history and a language that Indians have appropriated, transformed and made their own.
The Politics of Appropriation
Rushdie’s achievement can be understood through the idea of appropriation.
Appropriation means taking something that came from elsewhere and making it serve one's own purposes. Rushdie appropriates English from the colonial centre and relocates it within Indian cultural experience.
Thomas notes that Rushdie’s linguistic experimentation can be understood as resistance through the appropriation and re-forming of colonial English to express postcolonial experience.
The political significance is considerable.
The colonial attitude might suggest:
English belongs to England; Indians merely use it.
Rushdie’s linguistic practice responds:
English may have come from England, but it can be transformed in India.
The result is not necessarily a rejection of English. It is a rejection of the idea that English must remain unchanged.
This is why Chatterjee’s description of Rushdie as “Indianising, revitalising and decolonising” English is particularly useful.
The Limits and Problems of Chutnification
Nevertheless, chutnification is not entirely without problems.
A highly hybrid language can sometimes create difficulties for readers unfamiliar with Indian languages. Gupta notes that Indianised forms can become obstacles for non-Indian readers, particularly when slang and culturally specific expressions occur without explanation.
This raises an interesting question: For whom is Rushdie writing?
If he explains every Indian expression, he risks domesticating Indian language for Western readers. If he explains nothing, some readers may feel excluded.
Rushdie chooses the second possibility more often. His priority is not always universal linguistic accessibility; it is the authenticity and energy of the narrative.
Moreover, “Hinglish” itself should not be treated as a single, uniform Indian language. India contains many linguistic communities, and Rushdie’s use of Hindi, Urdu and Hindustani elements represents particular cultural and urban experiences rather than the entire linguistic diversity of India.
Thus, chutnification should be understood not as a complete representation of India but as one powerful literary strategy for representing its hybridity.
Conclusion: From Colonial English to Indian English
Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children demonstrates that language is never merely a neutral instrument. It carries histories of power, identity, culture and resistance.
Rushdie deliberately subverts standard English by mixing Hindi, Urdu and Hindustani vocabulary with English; altering grammar and syntax; inventing words; using slang; creating unusual compounds; employing repetition; deliberately misspelling words; and reproducing Indian speech patterns. These techniques create a linguistic form that Thomas describes as an “Indian” English distinct from received standard English.
The terms “chutnification” and “pickling” capture this transformation particularly well. Chutnification suggests the addition of Indian flavour to English, while pickling suggests the preservation and transformation of history through language. Both metaphors challenge the idea that English must remain linguistically pure.
The debate over whether English is still colonial or has become Indian ultimately requires a more complex answer. English has a colonial history in India, but Indian speakers and writers have appropriated it so extensively that it now exists in forms that cannot simply be described as British. Rushdie’s English belongs to this process of appropriation.
English in India is therefore neither simply British nor simply Indian. It is a hybrid, evolving and contested language.
Perhaps the most significant achievement of Rushdie’s linguistic revolution is that he does not ask permission to make English Indian. He simply does it. He takes the language of the former colonial centre, fills it with Indian voices, rhythms, idioms, foods, memories and histories, and sends it back into the world transformed.
In that sense, Midnight’s Children does not merely tell the story of a newly independent India. Its language performs independence.
Rushdie’s “chutnified” English becomes a literary space where languages meet without one necessarily having to surrender to another. English becomes an Indian medium precisely because it has been altered by Indian experience. As Khandeparkar concludes, English can be understood as a living linguistic archive shaped by cultural interaction and continuous change.
Thus, the most productive way to understand Rushdie is not to ask whether he writes “correct English.” The more important question is whether his English successfully represents the complexity of postcolonial India. The answer is emphatically yes. His linguistic experimentation turns English from a colonial inheritance into a site of creativity, resistance, hybridity and cultural self-expression.
Rushdie does not simply write India in English; he makes English speak India.
Works Consulted
Thomas, Deepa. “The Chutnification of English in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children: A Stylistic Analysis.” Asian Review of Social Sciences, vol. 8, no. S1, 2019, pp. 10–12.
Gupta, Arti. “The Chutnification of English Language.” International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities, vol. 6, no. 8, 2018, pp. 25–29.
Khandeparkar, Saachi. “Chutnification of English: Exploring the Kaleidoscope of Indian Influence on the English Language.”
Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. Jonathan Cape, 1981.
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