The Nanavati case is a crime of passion that shook India between the 50s and the
60s of last century, and culminated in what has been called “the Indian O.J. Simpson
trial”. In his masterpiece, Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie refers to it in
a chapter titled “Commander Sabarmati’s Baton”. All critics consider it a minor
episode in the novel. Yet, Rushdie’s accuracy in anticipating and preparing it, its
position in the plot as well as in the protagonist’s life, stress the importance of
this case in the novel’s narrative economy. The aim of this essay is to show that
the Nanavati/Sabarmati trial is a turning point of the novel, since it marks the
end of the protagonist’s childhood, and is one of the most successful examples of
Rushdie’s «poetics of crowd».
