Thematic Analysis of Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines

Salman Rushdie in his essay Imaginary Homelands talks about the homogenizing tendencies of the narratives of nation and pitches the notion of imaginary homeland against the all-encompassing grand narratives of a unified national identity. He categorically writes that India, despite those panoptic nationalist views, was ultimately came into existence by the power of imagination. This anti-essentialist view of place overcoming the barriers of state- sponsored demarcating lines pervades Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines which raises serious questions regarding the validity of the concept of nation. Ghosh’s narrative, through various convoluted time-shifts, lays bare the fragility of drawing borderlines to separate one nation from another. It goes without saying that the concept of nation has been instrumental in the emergence of new countries earlier subjugated by colonial rule. It bolstered the vision of a country fragmented and mutilated by the colonial administration. However, the concept of nationalism has also been a pretext for sowing the seeds of separatism, communality and racism in postcolonial countries. Edward Said in his Culture and Imperialism is critical of the notion of post-nationalism which advocates a complete rejection of imperial cultures and spreads the desire of difference. According to Said, this notion is circumscribed by the reiteration of the colonial discourse.

           Ghosh in his The Shadow Lines has documented the man- made barriers and prejudices which have given birth to fissiparous identities. The title is evocative of the shadowy qualities of barriers. However, there are instances galore in the text that authenticates the fact that cultural ethos cannot be made divisive in spite of the drawing of these arbitrary lines. Though the novel presents sporadic references of partition in different parts of the narrative, Ghosh’s aim is not to chart the cataclysmic horror that followed partition immediately. His concern is much deeper as he confronts such questions as what constitutes freedom and how dominant nationalist discourse constructs borderlines for political interests. He calls into question the basic rubric of modern nation states that simultaneously advocate freedom and separatism.

Against the official version of the concept of nationalism, Ghosh offers us his idealistic version of internationalism which aims at bridging the gulf between various nations. In that idealised world borders would be non-existent and nationalism an invalid discourse. The mutual relationship between two families from India and England over three generations is suggestive of this view-point. The friendship between Justice Chandrasekhar Dutta-Chaudhuri and Lionel Tresawsen in Calcutta in 19 ^th century survives even after the independence of India. In post-independent India the cordial relationship is manifest in the form of love affair between Tridib and Mary. Moreover, when Tridib is killed in an accident, the narrator finds a moment of bliss in the arm of May indicating how relationships transgress the territorial limitations of nations.

        The critique of narrow nationalism is seen in Ghosh’s presentation of the grandmother who stands as a staunch supporter of militant nationalism. She harbours the idea that only clear cut tangible boundaries will eliminate tension between communities. She is highly critical of Ila who is enamoured of western world. She is also contemptuous of Tridib who, according to her, plays ducks and drakes with his father’s money and is nothing but a loafer and a wastrel. Thamma also cherishes romantic notions about nationalism. She remembers the incident during her college days when a young reticent young man was arrested and deported to the Cellular Gaol in Andaman Islands. She is fascinated by that incident which shows her desire to be a part of the militant group.

That violence cannot be checked by demarcating lines is seen in the incident of the theft of the hair of the seer Mohammad, called ‘Mui-Mubarak’ in 1963. Though the incident took place in Srinagar it created tumult even in East Pakistan. It created so much an impact that Karachi labelled 31 December as a ‘Black Day.’ The violence in Dhaka in 1964 that took the lives of so many people including Tridib was an offshoot of this communal disharmony. The total episode of the theft of the hair and the resultant violence that engulfed people crossing borderlines indicate that lines are arbitrary and mirage-like. At a single provocation the tremor of violence can cross borders with in a twinkling of an eye.

     Ghosh complicates the issue of merely critiquing nationalism in his presentation of Ila. Hers is a story of failed cosmopolitanism. She denies any importance to the role of imagination to produce her own version of imagined community. Her psyche is shaped by the ‘world -wide string of departure lounges.’ Though she had the wherewithal to travel to many places crossing the borderlines she did not use this opportunity to invent her version of borderlines. That is why Tridib and the narrator criticise her:

       I could not persuade her that a place does not merely exist, that it has to be invented in one’s imagination; that her practical, bustling London was no less invented than mine, neither more nor less true, only very far apart. It was not her fault that she could not understand, for as Tridib often said of her, the inventions she lived in moved with her, so that although she had lived in many places, she had never travelled at all. (Ghosh, 21)

Shrieking any association with India she becomes enamoured of western cultures. Her choice of Nick as husband also shows her penchant for imbibing westernized values. In order to give validity to her life she holds on to other people’s invention. She becomes obsessed with the idea of getting recognition in the western world. She is ineffectual to bridge these two systems into an association and ends up prioritising the western enlightenment as a superior system.

     The ugliest feature of nationalism is its communal frenzy. Some fanatical zealots, mistakenly constructing the idea of nation along religious lines, indulge in torturing the people of other religions. Public archives are generally silent in documenting such shameful incidents lest the idea of nationhood promoted by the state should receive a setback. That is why the death of Tridib in communal riot received hardly any mention in the leading newspapers at that time. The narrator experienced a fearful traumatic moment of having his school bus attacked and being pursued by the crafty mob. Ghosh excavates such buried stories annihilated under the Juggernaut of nationalism.

Through various episodes of the novel Ghosh deconstructs the doctrine of nationalism by calling into question the statist version of history upon which the idea of nationalism is ensconced. To avoid the pitfalls of nationalism Bill Ashcroft proposed the concept of ‘Transnation’ that exposes the difference between the inhabitants of the nation and the administrative structures of the nation which is called the state. Transnation, according to Ashcroft, is the process of transgressing outside of the state that starts with the nation. Ghosh in his novel similarly advocates a transnational identity for the individual to overcome the circumscribed boundaries of nation state. Through Tridib’s notions of space and the illogical nature of arbitrary lines Ghosh enjoins upon the architects of states with boundaries to rise above centripetal outlook, fanaticism and parochialism and envision a world sans any border, a world where would be no division between the self and the other. Moreover, Ghosh’s narrative overcomes the ‘anxiety of Indianness’ (as Meenakshi Mukherjee uses the term) by not presenting a simplistic, all-encompassing, homogenized idealization of nationalism as a compensation for writing in English, the language of the coloniser. On the contrary, by delineating the ‘temporality’ and ‘locality’ of culture, as Homi k Bhabha advises, the novelist prioritizes the small narratives over grand narratives to reconstruct a national consciousness not defined by the entrenched representation of statist ideology.