novel in English is that Rushdie does not shy away from presenting fragmentation as intrinsic to the modern condition. There is little totality in the vision that Rushdie offers.  Saleem is a flawed narrator, and the vision of history that is offered is limited by subjectivity.  At the same time, Rushdie presents a complex world in which little is clear.  Midnight's Children is a part of the canon that displays the complex condition of modern nation building.  It is a landmark because it does not run away from the reality that modern nation building is far from absolute.  Contrary to simplistic narratives that seek to advocate a particular political agenda of control, Midnight's Childrenis an honest enough work to suggest that all sides in the nation building process might be limited to a great extent.  This is where the work would have to be seen as a landmark, as it established the contours and parameters of what was possible to expect from the Indian novel in English. 

It is clear that this novel, more than any other before it, was the first Indian novel written in English to gain the widespread attention of the English reading public. This was partly due to the fact that it was awared the Booker Prize for literature, which gained it fame and ensured that it was read widely in both Great Britain and the United States. However, what makes it a true "landmark" in the history of the Indian novel written in English is the way that it seeks to explore India's identity in particularly postcolonial terms. Remember that Saleem Sinai is born just as India a a nation is born, after the Raj, or Britain's colonial control of India, ceases. Therefore the reader is meant to see a parallel between Saleem and the new nation into which he is born. Note how Saleem himself answers the question of "Who am I?":

I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I'm gone which would not have happened if I had not come.

India and this central character are wedded together. Saleem at various points states how his fate is wedded to that of his country. As Saleem reminisces about his life he says he is dying because he suffers the same problem that India suffers from, having been suddenly plunged from immaturity to maturity. He says he is "falling apart," and the reader is meant to see Saleem's life as he grows up and ages as allegorically representing the new life of India as a nation. In the end, Saleem is only able to gain a measure of peace when he accepts his own fragility and vulnerability, which presents Rushdie's view that India as a nation is actually very vulnerable because of its background and the realities that threaten to destroy it. What makes this such a landmark book therefore is that it both came to the attention of a massive audience and that it was the first Indian novel written in English that sought to capture the realities of India in terms of its identity.

One of the most significant contributions of Midnight's Children to the Indian novel in English existed in how the novel critiqued both Indian and Colonial cultural expressions of the good.  While the novel was undeniably Postcolonial in scope, some of its most meaningful significance was an expression of how both the past and the present in the Colonial setting is filled with ambiguity, a lack of clarity, and doubt.  This is evidenced in so much throughout the novel. For example, the conditions of Saleem's birth and all of the Midnight's Children are ambiguous, just as his relationship with Shiva.  Saleem's examples of error or inability to serve as a coherent narrator is reflective of a larger element that Rushdie wishes to convey about both cultural settings:  

History is always ambiguous. Facts are hard to establish, and capable of being given many meanings. Reality is built on our prejudices, misconceptions and ignorance as well as on our perceptiveness and knowledge. The reading of Saleem's unreliable narration might be, I believed a useful analogy for the way in which we all, every day, attempt to 'read' the world. 

It is in this idea where the book is so significant.  Rushdie is conscious about how his book seeks to be an "attempt to read the world."  It is not one limited by cultural contexts, and its effect is to stress the universal condition of postcolonial literature:  "In remythologizing disenchanted Bombay—and so much else—without domesticating the energy there one whit, Rushdie somehow worked the same metamorphosis on my New York, and indeed on any Western city."  Midnight's Children  is so meaningful as an example of the Indian novel in English because it speaks to a condition of being intrinsic to both worlds.  "The West" and "The East" are put under the microscope by this Indian novel written in English.  It speaks for a universal and intricate notion of being in the world, something that both Indian audiences and English audiences could appreciate and grasp.

Rushdie is able to construct a work that serves as a template for many Postcolonial literary experiences. In this regard, Midnight's Children carries with it another profound contribution.  The idea of articulating an authentic Postcolonial experience through the language of "the oppressor" is powerful.  Rushdie's work contributes much to this experience.  Emerging from Midnight's Children, many other writers have been able to follow its footsteps in being true to the Postcolonial experience while writing in English.  Through his work, Rushdie greatly contributed to the idea that one can understand experiences of oppression and the silencing of voice through the language of those who perpetrated such abuses.  This helped to explore a globalized condition of being prior to globalization becoming the dominant paradigm with which to view the world.  It is in this respect where Midnight's Children becomes a significant contribution to the Indian novel in English.  Midnight's Children is able to do so by expanding and transforming the possibilities of what such work could actually be in the modern setting.