Periphery to the Center: A Reading on Amitav Ghosh

Nation has been considered as an ‘imagined political community’ by Benedict Anderson. It is considered ‘imagined’ as it is limited and assumed as a community to which the people ‘regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation’ are forced to believe nation to be a deep, horizontal comradeship to kill themselves willingly for these imagined and limited notions’. They have been denied the fact that such national myths and communities reject heterogeneity of a nation which lead to suppression and discrimination of various cultures and its diversities. This notion is thrust upon the people by the colonizers through their concept of nation which results in domination within the modern society.

The concept of nation thus prevents a writer from dealing with the individuals and their psychological perspectives which is an imagined and a limited notion restricting the writer to locate the individual identity and their family bounds beyond a nationalistic view. That is what Amitav Ghosh clearly calls as ‘restrictively imagined collectives’ which creates hindrances in writing about the individual identity. This has been the reason for several writers to displace themselves from dealing with the nationalistic concepts and to locate themselves in analyzing the familial bounds of the individuals.

This clearly showcases the concept of deconstruction by focusing on familial grounds rather than on nationhood. While Thomas Carlyle defines history as a biography of great men, Ghosh in his The Glass Palace, the Ibis trilogy, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Shadow Lines and The Hungry Tide emphasizes the lives of the individuals in a nation. Though The Glass Palace is well known for its nationalistic views, it also focuses mainly on the space of individuality that these characters long for.

He seems to believe that such a perception alone can make history truly valid, by giving them space to share their stories and suppression, to these neglected lots. This novel deals with three families and their ties in different settings like India, Burma, and Malay, which is more family bound rather than historical. These characters find a space for themselves that naturally moves them away from the confinement of nation.

Attaining this space is possible for them only if the individuals are prominent to play a role. For instance, the novel starts with the fall of Burmese dynasty King and Queen by the British in 1830’s. Though this event possesses such remarkable and essential great people of designation, the author prefers the common people to be given the chance to lead the story. The importance that must be given for the great people goes to normal people who either shine or attain failure in their lives.

In this way, Sea of Poppies has numerous characters as lascars, second mate in ship, indentured laborers and the colonizers. Colonizers meant here are not only the British but also the Indian people of higher social status through their caste and community. The characters of lead role who are offended by these colonizers are given a chance to turn against them as rebellions. A few characters manage to escape from the ship, on a boat, while they are on the way to Mauritius. Unmindful of their nationality and identity, they escape from the hands of their colonizers. The displacement of nation is seen in many of the Ghosh’s novels which act as a mode of deconstruction that throws light on the subjugated who take the role of living in the center.

In The Calcutta Chromosome, the invention of Malaria by Roland Ross is reinvented as an original idea of an Indian woman Mangala with the help of her assistant Laakhan. She acts behind the scenes and invents the Calcutta Chromosome and indirectly leads Roland Ross through that way as she knew that she would never be recognized for her invention. This scientific thriller proves to be of great ambassador for the concept of deconstructing the subjugated to the center.

Such a worthy treatment given to these unnoticed ordinary people, the common people who form a wide nation, be it any nation for that matter, grows powerful in all possible ways, yet, somehow, history rejects them to give or provide them a share in the records about the private history. They have space only for the public history that covers these people as a whole lot stating many people died or many sacrifices in general for namesake at times.

This aspect of such people witnesses nothing better, but recently have been noticed by many creative writers who strain themselves in giving them their share in history through their writings, especially by writing about their private lives and not being nationalistic. Characters in each novel creates a family tie unmindful of their caste or religion or even nationality as seen in The Glass Palace, Sea of Poppies and even The Shadow lines. This family tie binds them together who are capable of looking at themselves as individuals rather than representing their nations.

The characters in the novel are not representatives of a nation, but as individuals thus forming heterogeneity. Their identities are seen not with their nationalistic approach but as individuals who are in search of their own identities, locating themselves in a space where they feel contented by displaying themselves away from the nationalistic myths and its notions.

As put forth by several writers, the concept of nation has been separated from that of family ties. Amitav Ghosh is one such writer who finds himself comfortable in displacing his novels from the conceptions of nation. This notion of Ghosh gets reflected in the novels wherein characters distance away from the limited and the imagined communities that restrict their attempts to move further in search of their space in this world. As Bill Ashcroft says, “the issue is not whether we have nations but what kinds of nations”.

Thus, the author finds multicultural and multi ethnic aspects through his characters in these novels. They find themselves beyond their nation and focus on their cultural identities that gradually leads to their inner selves. This brings in the heterogeneous concepts of a nation rather than homogeneity that dislocate people from identifying themselves. Through these imaginary characters, Ghosh has displaced the notion of nation and has given prominence to the family ties that revolve around their own inner conflicts which have a different imaginary concreteness from that of other countries like Europe and America.

Sources

Novels of Amitav Ghosh

A Correspondence on Provincializing Europe – Amitav Ghosh and Dipesh Chakrabarthy

Benedict Anderson – Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism