Pre-partition India and the Rise of Indian Nationalism in Amitav Ghosh’s 'The Shadow Lines'

Sheikh Zobaer

doi:10.15294/rainbow.v9i2.40231

Abstract

The Shadow Lines is mostly celebrated for capturing the agony and trauma of the artificial segregation that divided the Indian subcontinent in 1947. However, the novel also provides a great insight into the undivided Indian subcontinent during the British colonial period. Moreover, the novel aptly captures the rise of Indian nationalism and the struggle against the British colonial rule through the revolutionary movements. Such image of pre-partition India is extremely important because the picture of an undivided India is what we need in order to compare the scenario of pre-partition India with that of a postcolonial India divided into two countries, and later into three with the independence of Bangladesh in 1971. This paper explores how The Shadow Lines captures colonial India and the rise of Indian nationalism through the lens of postcolonialism.

Highlights

The Shadow Lines is arguably the most famous novel written by Bengali Indian author Amitav Ghosh who is famous for his literary works in English fiction
The portrayal of pre-partition India in The Shadow Lines enables the readers to explore how the partition changed the socio-political atmosphere in the India subcontinent
The novel makes it abundantly clear that the partition could not separate the people who share the same cultural and historical background; rather, such an artificial segregation worked as a catalyst for provoking cross-border unrest among the people of India and Pakistan because of their misguided religious zeal

Summary

Introduction

The Shadow Lines is arguably the most famous novel written by Bengali Indian author Amitav Ghosh who is famous for his literary works in English fiction. Published in 1988, the novel lucidly captures the futility of the partition of India, earning Amitav Ghosh the Sahitya Akademi Award. The novel tells the story of a family victimized by the partition of India It is not just the story of some random family; this fictional family tells the story of all the families who were the victims of the tumultuous period of the great divide in 1947 that saw the Indian subcontinent divided into two countries who have always been hostile to each other. Partition can only separate the land by man-made fences, but cannot separate the people who share the same history and legacy of sharing the same territory and living the same kind of life for centuries. There are so many factors that connect the people of a particular region together, and if there are socio-cultural similarities among the people living in that region, no artificial borders and boundaries can separate them in true sense; rather, animosity is all that the imposed separation spawns

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