Partition and Its Aftermath: A Postcolonial
Reading of Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow
Lines
Dr. P. Indira Devi
Associate Professor
of English & Principal
Govt. Degree
College,
Huzurabad,
Karimnagar, Telangana, India
Abstract:
Amitav Ghosh, a contemporary Indian novelist, is primarily obsessed with
history. His writings focus on issues related to politics and history. He is
mostly influenced by the stories of his father which deal with the World War
and British Indian Army. The silences of his father's generations and the
writer's memories were crystallized into the form
of novels. His best novel The Shadow Lines is based on the theme of partition.
Three generations of a family are weaved in the story. The narrator journeys
from Calcutta to Bangladesh and onto England. Through the journeys Ghosh tries
to explore the impact of violence on human life in the post colonial era. The
novel illustrates the growth of Calcutta as a city and India as a nation over a
period of three decades or more. The present paper tries to explore the issue
of partition of Bengal and ties to describe the plights of the migrants. The
paper also tries to focus on the effects of partition and describe the
narrative technique employed by the novelist.
Keywords: Partition, Violence, Migrants, Plights, Narrative Technique
Amitav Ghosh, one of the prolific
Indian writers in English. His works deals with a number of issues and won him
acclaim and honors throughout the world. Despite the panoramic scope of his
novels, both in terms of the issues and settings, he has been persistently
exploring the issues of identity and its formation in his works. He obtained a
doctorate from Oxford University. He contributed scholarly articles for The
Hindu and The New Yorker. In
2007 he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India, for his
outstanding contribution in the field of literature. As a prolific writer,
Ghosh is not only dealt with a number of issues but also experimented with
different styles and conventions. Despite the panoramic scope of his novels,
both in terms of the issues and settings, Ghosh has been persistently exploring
the issues of identity and its formation in his works. He has combined history
with a contemporary vision of a world free from divisions of all sorts. Travel
motif has been used to create a neutral space where barriers dissolve, and
borders are blurred. Further, Ghosh has made a unique experiment to amalgamate
Literature, Science, Philosophy, History, Psychology, Anthropology, and Sociology.
As a fiction-historian, he celebrates and explores diversity and shows his
concern is largely with historical movements and events, which are beyond the
control of individuals, at the same time concentrating upon the predicament of
the individual under such circumstances.
Ghosh’s
novel The Shadow Lines advocates for
universal political freedom and individual’s response to aggression and
nationalism. The novel traces about fifty years of relations among three
generations of two families of India and England. The narrator, a young school
boy in Calcutta listens to the stories told by his cousin Tridib. The stories
provide a new kind of experience for the boy to understand the outside world.
The first instance of different layers of political occurrences in the novel
appears in the memories of the grandmother of the narrator about her old
hometown Dhaka. The grandmother had to leave Dhaka as a result of partition and
settles in Calcutta. She always remembers her childhood days and her experience
as an adult in Dhaka. Her stories portrays her memories in Dhaka. The tranquil
vision of her ancestral home in Dhaka is devastated with the political and
communal turmoil of India and Pakistan partition. The novel reflects the
violence of partition and concept of nationalism through the characters Tridib
and his grandmother.
The communal riots in
1964 in Dhaka lead to the death of Tridib. The grandmother talks of communal
riots as, "We have to kill them, before they kill us, "(237) Her
ancestral home in Dhaka was like a ‘pastoral retreat’ now turned to be a
reminder of ‘communal violence’. Her golden vision is devastated with the
aftermath of India and Pakistan partition. The death of Tridib is the pinnacle
incident in the political turmoil of the novel The Shadow Lines.
The focus of the novel
is on the political overtones, Communal strife and irresistible urge of
nationalism. The narrative technique is very interesting and the political
insights did not hamper the flow of the story. This makes the novel very
distinctive in narration and characterization. The narrative technique echoes
intricate layering with its looping and nestling of story within the story and
place within the place. The private crisis mirrors public turmoil at various
incidents of the novel. The grandmother's response to Ila is not sympathetic
one, she tells the narrator, “Ila has no right to live there. [...] She doesn't
belong there. It took those people a long time to build that country. [...]
years and years of war and bloodshed. Everyone who lives there has earned his
right to be there with blood War in their religion. That's what it takes to
make a country.” (77-78)
The feelings of
nationalism can only be developed through the process of war and sustained
bloodshed. The time of the novel moves backwards and forwards that makes the
political incidents very realistic. The unnamed narrator with his universal
consciousness wallows in an empowering sense of simultaneity and
correspondence. The narrator aptly rejects such easy generalizations and
recalls the more worldly-wise Tridib's observations,
All she wanted was a middle class life in
which, like the middle classes the world over, she would thrive believing in
the unity of nationhood and territory, of self respect and national power: that
was all she wanted a modern middle class life, a small thing that history had
denied her in its fullness and for which she could never forgive it. (178)
Tridib feels that the
grandmother was not a fascist, but a middle class woman of the modern who is living
in fantasy. The grandmother had a bitter experience of the British rule and the
terrorist movement in Bengal, "clandestine network and home-made
bombs." She wanted to be free, so she never understands lla's desire to
live in London.
Ila has a few radical
friends in London, who protest on political issues. Another facet of
nationalism is revealed in Nick Price, who later marries lla. Nick gave up his
job as a C.A. in Kuwait because of his out-of-date management practices and
undue interference of the Arab business partners. He was still under the
influence of British colonial practices which provides opportunities for
enjoying the power. The grandmother's desire for freedom, May's concept of
internationalism, Nick's longing for colonial hangover, Ila's striving for
personal freedom the important features of the novel. Generally, the quest for
freedom becomes the source of violence in the history. The shadow lines are drawn between people and
nations is often a mere illusion. The force and appeal of nationalism cannot be
wished away, just as death by a communal mob in the by lanes of old Dhaka.
Robi, an IAS officer, in charge of a district, philosophies to lla and the
narrator near a derelict church in Clapham, London.
You know, if you look at the picture on the
front pages of the newspapers at home now, all those pictures of deal people in
Assam, the north-east, Punjab, Sri Lanka, Tripura-people shot by terrorists and
separatists and a the army and the police, you'll find somewhere behind it all,
that single word, everyone's doing it to be free. (246)
Amitav Ghosh portrays
the characters like the grandmother and Ila, who did not indulge in violence
are on the verge of it. The grandmother does some household activities for the
Bengal terrorists kill the English magistrate at Khulna during her student
days. Another important feature of the novel is Ila separation from her family
in order to adapt to cosmopolitan lifestyle of London. Ghosh with his
extraordinary skills of using language and narrative techniques highlights the
irrational behavior of the characters. The narrator recalls these events as a
research student during 1980s. The author was very successful to convey that
events of the novel are similar to the historical incidents of 1980s. The schoolboys
strongly believe that a certain community has poisoned the water in Calcutta.
Later as a research student, the narrator tries to recall the motivation for
riots in Calcutta by reading newspaper reports
In Calcutta rumours were in the air
especially that familiar old rumour, the harbinger of every serious riot that the trains from Pakistan were arriving
packed with corpses [...] with refugees still pouring in, rumours began to flow
like floodwaters through the city and angry crowds began to gather at the
stations. (229)
Ghosh believes the
impact of rumours in communal riots which are authenticated by the illustrious
historian Prof. Sumit Sarkar of University of Delhi. Prof. Sarkar shows the effectiveness of rumour in
any mass movement.
From out of their misery and hope, varied
sections of the Indian people seems to have fashioned
their own images of Gandhi, particularly in the early days whom he was still to
most people a distant, vaguely-glimpsed or heard-of tale of a holy man with miracle
working powers [...] peasants were giving vague rumours about Gandhi a radical,
anti-zamindar twist. (181)
The Shadow Lines explains the cultural separation; communal riots
are in a state of crisis in India. The political allegory, the contemporary situation
and motivation for riots is very sensitively dealt with. The rumour on
poisoning of water and of a train full of dead bodies is recurring feature in
the political turmoil and these rumours are not confined to a particular place
or time. Ghosh discloses that on 27 December 1963, two hundred and sixty-three
years after the Mu-i-Mubarak, believed to be heir of the Prophet Mohammed, was
brought to Kashmir, it was stolen. The newspaper reports, read by the narrator,
indicate that "there was not one single recorded incident of animosity
Seven Kashmiri Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs." (225)
The protests in
Pakistan were subsided except in Khulna which is a small town in east wing of
Pakistan where a demonstration turned violent and a few shops were burnt into
ashes and a few people were also killed. The headlines in newspapers reported,
"Fourteen die in the frenzy off Khulna" (228). Gradually the riots
were spread from Khulna to Dhaka. There were rumours about the poisoning of
water, trains full of dead bodies. They initiated the communal frenzy and
violence. The novel depicts the communal conflict in Calcutta and erstwhile
East Pakistan which is followed in some parts of contemporary India. Amitav’s
narrative technique tries to bring compactness to the novel. Communal strife
was expressed wonderfully without describing the violence. The narrator was
shocked with the violent incidents which triggered off which resulted in the
death of his cousin Tridib.
The riots of 1964 in
Calcutta were similar to 1984 Delhi riots and 1987 Meerut riots. The scheme of
these riots is more or less same. The technique of newspaper reporting triggers
at a continuity of the communal strife. The violence in Calcutta is presented
as the memories of the narrator. The
overall distrust is stressed, facts which have a bearing on communal trouble in
the current decade also. Such treatment adds to the immediate relevant of The
Shadow Lines. Two, the fragmented, disjointed and discontinuous mode of
experience which is delineated in the text is characteristic of postmodern
subjectivity. To illustrate, different characters experience Tridib's death in
the novel in a disjointed and discontinuous manner. Its fuller implications are
understood when different characters bring their partial perspectives on this
very painful and poignant incident. (Ashcroft 196)
May narrates the death
details of Tridib to the narrator in London after many years of his death. She
also had the guilty feeling that she was responsible for Tridib's death. The
narrator believed that accident was the reason for Tridib’s death. Tridib's
saved May and could save himself but fell as the prey to the mad mob which led
to his death. Tridib dies as he lived, an iconoclast, a mystery.
The absence of
pessimism and narrative technique made The
Shadow Lines a very interesting and convincing novel. The novelist
described the political freedom in the contemporary period without any easy
solutions. Ghosh shows how different cultures and communities are becoming
antagonistic to a point of no return.
The novel was told in first person narration and was about a growing
boy, who lives in the shadow of the man he idealizes and of an individual drawn
into history as well as social and political turbulences. Tridib gives the boy,
who is the narrator of the novel-worlds to travel in mind...eyes to see with
them with. The narrator's grandmothers, Tha'mma is the third central character
to the structure in the novel. As an eight-year old child, the narrator (35)
sees England through the eyes of Ila and Tridib as a 26 years old, he realizes
the truth when merges from the shadows of Ila. Tridib and Tha'mma. Tha'mma is
an important character, as she plays a foil to the younger generation and also
a critic of those who she thinks have deviated from Indian mores. She is the
grandmother of a narrator, a retired headmistress, a disciplinarian head of the
family. Like old persons, she has faith in old accepted values of life and
looks down upon those who do not fall in line with her. She was born and brought
up in a joint family in Dhaka. Tha'mma was married to an engineer with railways
in Burma, therefore she passed the first twelve years of her married life in
railway colonies. The protagonist of the character belongs to a boy, who grows
up in a middle- class family; he is the narrator's uncle. He is in love with
May and occupies the central place in several incidents of the novel.
Works Cited
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffith and Helen
Tiffin, eds. The Post-Cotontal Studies Reader London. Routledge, 1995. Print.
Ghosh, Amitav. The Shadow Lines. (abbreviated
as TSL) New Delhi: Oxford U P, 1988. Print.
Sarkar, Sumit. Modern India 1885-1947.
Madras: Macmillan India, 1983. Print.