DOI: 10.5176/2251-3566_L314.40
Authors: Dr. Nazia Hasan
Abstract: Amitav Ghosh, winner of various international awards, has a rich repertoire of novels written with a consciousness towards the history of India and many other important parts of Eastern civilization. Ghosh’s novels by treating history in the particular manner explicated in the present paper, is an attempt to humanize the discipline of recapitulation, differently. It aims to allow for a certain measure of equality between historians’ histories and other constructions of the past. The paper treats his novels- The Shadow Lines, The Glass Palace and In an Antique Land.
Amitav Ghosh succeeds in convincing the readers that the historical narratives can’t be taken as worlds shut- reputedly finished, done with and over. Rather he shows how those days, people and values of yore have not diffused totally yet! We are living them in some ways, in some aspect of extension. He also emphasizes the urgency to know our past and to revise our understanding of it with progress of time. He rejects the stagist, historicist distinctions between East and West, high and low classes. He invites us to join in this new movement to democratize the writing of Indian and European history. This is very possible by looking on subordinate social groups of both East and West as equal participants in making all those changes which we know by the name of historical. He is a subaltern historian in the real sense that he boards upon the boat of novel writing to do the job perfectly – one doesn’t need to be a master for trying all trades. We have come out of the monological times! Because history is not the only way to interpret one’s past, fiction in the hands of Ghosh does that even better! He can efficiently deal with the plurality of both margins and centres simultaneously. He has been successful in stepping out of the problem of Eurocentrism, shared across the geographical boundaries, by knowing himself first. His scholarship on Indian and Eastern matters and issues related to economy, culture, history and even science makes him come through proficient.
Keywords: amitav ghosh, the shadow lines, the glass palace, antique land, historiography, history
Updating...