The United Kingdom signed the Indian Independence Act in 1947, granting India independence and separating what was previously British India into two countries: India and Pakistan. Besides dividing provinces from one another, the partition also divided two provinces internally: Bengal and Punjab. This decision threatened to make members of various religious groups minorities in the newly established regions and so sparked one of the largest mass migrations seen in history. As Muslims made their way west to Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs made their way to India, violence erupted and millions were massacred. The bloodiest of these attacks occurred around the newly erected borders in the Bengal and Punjab provinces.

The exodus of the British Raj and subsequent partitioning of India forever transformed the people impacted by each event, and Rushdie often explores these consequences in his writing. Though Pakistan is never referenced in the narrative, Rushdie mentions the cities Lahore, Multan, and Bahawalpur, all of which are in the West Punjab province in Pakistan. Implicitly, the story unfolds against this backdrop of division, migration, and upheaval, laying the groundwork for its exploration of Colonialism’s Displacements and Destabilizations.