In Salman Rushdie’s *Midnight’s Children*, 1,001 children are born during the first hour of India’s independence. They are born between midnight and 1 a.m. on 15 August 1947, and the novel gives them magical abilities connected to the historic moment of their birth.
The central character, Saleem Sinai, is born at the exact stroke of midnight, making him the symbolic age of independent India. He discovers that the other midnight’s children are scattered across the country and uses telepathy to bring them together in the Midnight’s Children’s Conference. Their different powers and backgrounds reflect India’s linguistic, religious, cultural, and political diversity.
The number 1,001 echoes the storytelling tradition of *One Thousand and One Nights*, reinforcing Rushdie’s blending of myth, folklore, and national history. The children are not simply a supernatural group: they function as an allegory for the possibilities and conflicts of the newly independent nation.
A common mix-up is the number 1,000. Some summaries describe Saleem as connecting with 1,000 other children, but Saleem is one of the total 1,001 children. The novel was published in 1981 and won the Booker Prize that year.