When the Global and the Local Meet in the Tide
Country: Navigating the Interplay of Global Modernities in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide
Swarnava
Bhattacharyya,
Resource Person,
Department of
English,
Scottish Church
College,
West Bengal,
India.
Abstract: Amitav Ghosh, in one of his most brilliant novels
i.e. The Hungry Tide, has deftly shown various significant aspects of the
Sundarban region, commonly known as the ‘tide country’, through different
episodes of the novel. These aspects, in turn, exhibit a unique interplay of
the global as well as the local issues which greatly inform the way in which
the characters navigate their lives in the course of the narrative. The
characters having global perspectives such as Kanai and Piya, for instance,
experience certain transformative incidents after coming into contact with the
local in the Sundarbans that clearly shows how the local comes to affect the
global. The global, on the other hand, is also shown to have a strong bearing
on the local as the author evidently shows through his portrayal of the
characters like Fokir and Moyna in the text. This strange dynamics between the
two closely corresponds to the idea of ‘glocalization’ that Roland Robertson, a
renowned sociologist, has discussed at length in his seminal book titled as
Global Modernities. In this context, therefore, this paper attempts to explore
the instances of modernity in which the global and the local meet in the tide
country.
Keywords: global, local, interplay, glocalization,
modernities.
Introduction
The setting of
Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, the
Sundarbans or in other words, the tide country, presents a complex
confrontation between the global and the local which goes on to equally affect
both the local inhabitants as well as the so-called outsiders in the novel i.e.
Kanai and Piya. This meeting of the global and the local in the text becomes
even more complex particularly against the backdrop of an infamous historical
incident known as the Morichjhapi Massacre which had taken place back in 1978.
This incident involved the complexity specifically with regard to the illegal
occupation of the land earmarked for environmental development by a group of
displaced people who came a long way from Dandakaranya in order to settle down
over there. It directly came at odds with the interests of the contemporary
projects of development that have come to become the markers of modernity.
They, however, ironically aimed at development keeping the local inhabitants
outside the scope of it which only gave rise to an ever-widening gap between
the global and the local in the context of the tide country in particular.
Roland Robertson, a renowned British sociologist, has significantly talked
about the idea of ‘glocalization’ in an edited book, titled as Global Modernities, that seeks to
combine both the elements of the global and the local without ignoring the
latter. The ensuing portion of this paper attempts precisely to show how these
two aspects meet in this novel.
The Meeting of the Global and the Local in the Tide
Country
The
environmental issues which Amitav Ghosh raises poignantly in the course of his
novel, The Hungry Tide, certainly
bear relevance across the globe and at the same time, resonate deeply with the
local cultures, traditions and people which becomes exemplified through the
characters such as Horen and Fokir, the two local fishermen. The latter,
moreover, possesses a wide repertoire of practical knowledge about the nuances
of the local that the characters like Piya and Kanai fail to display at certain
critical junctures. The portmanteau word, ‘glocalisation’ which Roland
Robertson uses as the central idea of his book, Global Modernities, is seen to be manifested perfectly in the
characters of Kanai Dutt and Piyali Roy or Piya, a translator and a cetologist,
respectively, who come to Lusibari, a nondescript place in the “immense
archipelago of islands” (Ghosh 6), virtually from the outside world with their
own purposes. Both of these characters with the global perspectives come to
interact with the local, events and people, in a manner which entirely
transforms their earlier self-important behavior or attitude into a humbled one
by the end of the novel.
Kanai Dutt or
Kanai who comes to Lusibari after a long span of thirty-two years finds it in a
completely different form. His initial sense of self-importance seems to
blatantly disregard the local ethos as it is observed when he refuses to take
the myth of Bon Bibi seriously into account especially under the influence of
his uncle, Nirmal, a former lecturer of English at Ashutosh College, Kolkata,
who had dismissed the significance of it by simply referring to it as “false
consciousness” (Ghosh 101). After reading the notebook of Nirmal who similarly
came to Lusibari from the outside and encountered the same consequence
subsequently, the outlook of Kanai towards the local culture, beliefs and
traditions begins to change a little. The incident which he encounters at
Garjontola well and truly destroys his arrogant sense of self and finally leads
him to recognise and at the same time, embrace the local with equal felicity.
At Garjontola, he shows total disregard towards Fokir’s pragmatic knowledge
about the local issues and events even when the latter warns him about the
possible presence of a tiger seeing fresh marks of paw on the mud. As a result,
Fokir challenges him to land on the island. He, however, becomes extremely
furious with Fokir and starts hurling abuses towards him when he falls on his
face because of his inability to walk on the mud. Consequently, the latter goes
away with his boat leaving Kanai alone on the island. Kanai, subsequently,
becomes stiff with fright and horror seeing a figure of a tiger who seems to
look straight at him and thereby falls down becoming unconscious. Fokir and
Piya, later on, rescues him coming to Garjontola and this leads Kanai to write
in one of his letters to Piya, “…at Garjontola, I learnt how little I know of
myself and of the world” (Ghosh 353) much in the manner of Nirmal who had said
to Horen, “I am not my old self anymore” (Ghosh 179) upon his realisation after
remaining associated with the local people and teaching their children for a
considerable period of time. This clearly exhibits Kanai’s changed perception
of the world as a result of his contact with the local world of the ‘tide
country’.
Piya too, on the
other hand, similarly faces another event that goes on to alter her outlook
totally aligning her global perspective with that of the local in the course of
the novel. She has come to Lusibari for the purpose of her research on the
behaviour of the Irrawaddy dolphins, otherwise known as Orcaella brevirostris, which prompts her to mingle with the local
people such as Fokir whose immense store of practical knowledge about the
ecology of the ‘tide country’ comes to her help in this regard. Her constant
interaction with him throughout her research project renders her more
sympathetic towards Fokir as well as all the other local inhabitants of this
region in general. On one such occasion when she is engaged in finding out the
dolphins along with Fokir and Kanai, the incident of a violent mob burning a
trapped tiger alive completely unsettles her. The fact that Fokir too becomes
complicit with the crowd renders the whole experience even more disturbing for
her. Even though she desperately pleads for its life, her pleas fall
practically on deaf ears. Kanai attempts to comfort her and make her understand
the harsh reality by comparing the magnitude of the number of deaths by the
attacks of the tigers to that of a genocide which go unreported most of the
time. He significantly holds both Piya and himself for this conflict between
the man and nature and says that a push is being made to “protect the wildlife
without regard for the human cost” (Ghosh 301) and people like him “have chosen
to hide these costs, basically in order to curry favour with their Western
patrons” (Ghosh 301). This, in a stark contrast to the earlier dismissive
attitude of Kanai, evidently exhibits a more understanding and accommodative
approach towards the local which has resulted from the meeting of the global
and the local in him.
The global
outlook of Piya undergoes a final transformation towards the end of the novel
when she encounters a fierce cyclone while being on the boat of Fokir. The fact
that Fokir sacrifices his own life for the purpose of saving that of Piya
rattles the very foundation of the latter’s worldview which was previously
rooted in a global perspective that always tends to ignore the issues
pertaining specifically to the local. This eventually leads her to take up the
decision of continuing with her project work of studying the movement of
Irrawaddy dolphins, staying at Lusibari only in collaboration with the local
fishermen. She even goes on to chalk out a plan as to how she would be working
with the Badabon Trust, an organisation run primarily by Nilima, the wife of
Nirmal, more fondly known as ‘Mashima’ for the purpose of the welfare of the
indigenous inhabitants. This again highlights the way in which the global
forces represented by the characters like Nirmal, Kanai and Piya intermingle
with those of the local as exemplified by the local fishermen such as Horen and
Fokir in the narrative.
The account of
Sir Daniel Hamilton towards the beginning of the novel, however, shows the
diametrically opposite side of it whereby a conflict of sorts takes place
between the global and the local instead of a mere interaction. His attempt at
introducing modernity in the ‘tide country’ came in direct conflict with the
very nature of the ecosystem as his idealistic conception of a co-operative
society where everyone would live with others peacefully without having any
division proved to be utopian in nature. This also metaphorically signifies the
resistance which the local forces put up against the hostile global forces.
This particular context of the novel corresponds to what Roland Robertson, the
sociologist, has dealt with in the book, Global
Modernities, i.e. ‘glocalisation’ which essentially is another form of
globalisation that discounts the idea of a monolithic form of modernity imposed
by the Western world and instead argues for different other forms of modernity
that need to be understood as well as acknowledged in certain specific local
contexts precisely in the manner in which Amitav Ghosh has done the same in The Hungry Tide. Towards the very
beginning of the second chapter of Global
Modernities, entitled ‘Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity’,
Robertson has categorically set the very tone of his argument by saying:
There is an
evident tendency to think of globalization in a rather casual way as referring
to very large-scale phenomena – as being, for example, the preoccupation of
sociologists who are interested in big macrosociological problems, in contrast
to those who have microsociological or local perspectives. I consider this to
be very misleading. (Robertson 25)
This remarkable
passage helps explain the dynamics between the global and the local to a great
extent. The global environmental concern in the ‘tide country’ with particular
regard to the wildlife conservation is clearly shown in the novel to have
strong repercussions at the local level too because of the fact that it is
usually implemented in the name of development and modernity at the expense of
the indigenous population. Kanai, in the course of his conversation with Piya
on the boat, talks precisely about this grim fact even though he too had once
referred to the islands as “rat-eaten islands” (Ghosh 53) with a self-evident
dismissive attitude while speaking to his Marxist uncle, Nirmal, in his
childhood.
Conclusion
The entirety of The Hungry Tide and the various events
that have unfolded in its course have indicated towards a holistic approach of
understanding the idea of ‘globalization’ that acknowledges the heterogeneous
character of it, refusing to confine its extent within a singular, homogenising
force as it is traditionally thought to be. The term which Robertson has used
in the book is ‘particularistic’ in order to refer to the local, indigenous
cultures as well as their attendant complexities, as opposed to the
‘universal’, ‘macrosociological’ or, in other words, the global forces which
always tend to overlook the former. It also goes on to emphasise the spatial as
well as the temporal aspects in the process which is seen typically in the
context of the ‘tide country’ and the Morichjhapi incident, respectively, in The Hungry Tide. This approach, therefore,
further reinforces what Robertson tellingly concludes his chapter with, saying:
In particular, I
have tried to transcend the tendency to cast the idea of globalization as inevitably in tension with the idea of
localization. I have instead maintained that globalization – in the broadest
sense, the compression of the world – has involved and increasingly involves
the creation and the incorporation of locality… (Robertson 40)
This is
precisely the approach, adopted by the characters like Nirmal, Kanai and Piya
in the novel, which makes them understand how a monolithic idea of the global
remains inadequate in a region like the Sundarbans and simultaneously helps the
global meet the local in the ‘tide country’, recognising the various
modernities, or the particular local cultures and traditions, in other words.
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