The distrust between East and West may be as old as the confluence of the two parts of the world themselves. After all, it was during his attempt to conquer India that Alexander the Great fell ill with the fever that was the only thing that kept him from world conquest (Biography.com Editors). The ongoing war between the feverishly fervent establishment of Islam and the coolly complacent secular-Christian West is only becoming more and more entrenched by the news cycle, as the West seems to have forgotten that it’s only been a few centuries since its leaders were also heading out into points distant to start wars on the basis of religion. The conflict between England and those areas in South Asia that were once part of the British Empire and then became independent – but still bear the mark of their occupying nation. The interaction between East and West in Rushdie’s tale “Chekov and Zulu” shows that a great deal of that effect is still in place.
The setting of “Chekov and Zulu” is London shortly after the passing of Indira Gandhi, who had been assassinated by Sikhs. The reader does not find out the ethnicity or even the real names of these two central characters, although the reader does learn that Zulu is of the Sikh faith. One of the truths about that point in time is that Sikhs throughout India were receiving some violent persecution because of the fact that Gandhi had been slain by Sikhs. However, Chekov and Zulu live far from Bombay, ensconced in London. Their current purpose is to discover the people behind the attack, and to soak their mission in some humor, they compare themselves to these two peerless characters from the Star Trek television series. In Rushdie’s story, Chekov serves as the mental brain trust, and Zulu is the one who will try and worm himself into the terrorist group. What do Chekov and Zulu call the terrorists? If you know your Star Trek well at all, it will not surprise you to learn that that crew has received the name “Klingons.” When Chekov is not masterminding this infiltration, he is gladhanding businessmen in London, with the purpose of soliciting donations toward the Indian government. The implication is that Chekov has no trouble rubbing elbows with members of the occupying power, although when he talks about the thieves who had robbed their home, he refers to the piles of Indian art that had made its way into museums of Great Britain through some magical process after colonization had taken place. The fact that so much of Britain’s economic and geopolitical advancement had come from the fact that the Indian people were working hard and suffering to bring those same advances about. Zulu is more of a reticent man, happy to take care of his family and more likely to think only of the task before him than to consider the philosophical implications of what he is doing.
In our own time, it might be difficult to understand why Salman Rushdie chose the names Chekov and Zulu for his characters. There were many ways in which these characters represented a terrifically comic pairing in the Star Trek television series and subsequent feature films. However, the fact that they would appear in a story about a pair of Indian agents investigating the death of one of their own while seeming to be just pedagogical tools of that school for long enough. Their love for Western culture speaks for itself in this selection of nicknames for themselves. As the story goes by, Chekov points out that they had never even seen the show when they were young and still wanted to celebrate the tradition with their nicknames. Of course in our own time it’s likely that most people have not seen the television show, relying instead on the movies that have come out to carry the picture of this eccentric crew to the next generation. One of the seminal ironies of this point in the story is that these two men could be called “Trekkies” in American culture, thanks to their humorous attachment to the show, but the fact is that these are not bumbling nerds who have recorded every episode of the old show on their DVR and are simply waiting for the next social opportunity to be able to show it. Instead, they act a little more like a real spy than a pair who got lost from the rest of the crew of The Big Bang Theory. They can wiggle their way into terrorist cells and get key documents, and they can drop tails like an expert.
The central disconnect in the novel comes between the knowledge that Chekov and Zulu have about Western culture and their emotions that they have about British involvement in several careers. Of course, they pay their lip service to the regime, telling the remaining people that it is important to respect the job that the English government did in making India’s infrastructure as strong as it is today. However, Zulu takes a much grimmer view of the reasons behind the involvement of the English government in acts of terrorism. The fact that Members of Parliament may have been involved in arranging the attack on Indira Gandhi’s life has a corrosive effect on Zulu’s faith in the effect that the British government shows some complicity in this awful act. If the British government is going to take up weapons against this solid activist, what does that say about the agenda of the British government? After all, while Indira Gandhi was a powerful woman, she was also a woman of peace and did not look likely to take her country’s military establishment apart, limb from limb, but instead appeared likely to win on the basis of the people’s vote (Biography.com Editors). This could have been a powerful motivator for change both within England as well as without, as it was a time for colonial lands to stand proud and apart from their former imperial power.
In the final analysis, the battle between West and East, as Rushdie sees it, remains a battle between occupier and occupied, between those who have been there and still are on the way, those who have and those who do not. Sometimes the definition of those two parties can blend together, but it is always important to remember that one side has power and exploits it against the other. One of the central lessons of this story is that, just like Star Trek’s Western culture has to find its peace with the Klingons and the Romulans, among others, the Indians and the British still have to find peace with one another.
Works Cited
Biography.com Editors. “Alexander the Great Biography.” Biography.com n.d.
Web. 29 April 2016.
Biography.com Editors. “Indira Gandhi Biography.” Biography.com n.d. Web. 29
