Deconstruction of Eurocentric Historiography in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide

Abstract

The Hungry Tide, the fourth novel of Amitav Ghosh, mainly chronicles the daily struggles of the marginalized people living in the islands of Sundarbans. Along with their struggle, Ghosh records their customs, culture, religion, language, dreams, legends and myths in the novel. Ghosh’s incorporation of such elements of the tidal country has two prominent implications. Firstly, it allows him to deconstruct the Eurocentric historiography of India that resulted from its colonial past. Secondly, he writes an alternative history from the perspective of the subaltern where the people of marginalized group gain their voice, agency and position that are absent in the official and recorded history. Although he writes the novel using English language, he artistically subverts the language of the colonizers to dig up an authentic history by employing his own style of historiography that reconnects us with both our past and forgotten history. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to show how Amitav Ghosh, in his novel The Hungry Tide, endeavours to create an alternate historiography of the tidal country that transcends the stereotypical Eurocentric narrativity and presents a scrap of history that is omitted from the officially recorded history.