Subaltern envy? Salman rushdie's the Moor's Last Sigh

Salman Rushdie s The Moor s Last Sigh presents a case study in ressentiment through the eponymous character Moraes Zogoiby, the Moor, who experiences his hybridity as a handicap but also regards it as an entitlement. A social outcast and member of an ethnic minority, the mongrel Moor seeks retribution for his own painful alienation by reconstructing himself as a victim while lashing out to victimize others on the questionable grounds of his victimhood. His self-rationalization is couched in the discourse of minority rights, universalism, democratic values and hybridity. In his contradictory character we are meant to recognize the perplexities of postcolonial India s contradictions, such as that between universalist socialist secularism and violently exclusivist Hindu nationalism. Rushdie s novel turns on a driving ethico-political exploration, posing the question of the failure of the postcolonial nation-state s avowed pluralism and the rise of majoritarian ethnonationalism disguised as tolerant universalism.