The Pang of Partition in Amitav Ghosh’s the Shadow Lines

Abstract

Indian history is divided into past, present and future. The true national identity lies on the individual awareness and the nation’s heritage. The present paper is intended to examination of Amitav Ghosh treats the theme of nationalism and partition in his “The Shadow Lines” (1988) and how he describes the concept of nationalism. The continuous prompt of the nation by our ancestors has put into a questioning attitude of people recently. Ghosh views the traditional values by his animated and unendurable ideas. Amitav Ghosh has focused on the political interference in contemporary world in relation to her work “The Shadow Lines”. The political influence and violence in contemporary world are aptly marked out in this novel. The partition provided the writers with the occasion to write about the plight of the people in the subcontinent in order to bring home mainly to the western world, the impact of British rule, which had previously boasted of civilizing mission. The partition theme in Indian novels in English set the dystopian tune, which would be later on carried on to the tone of the postcolonial theories. Post-colonialism began as recognition of the dominant post-war economic and political conditions which were prevalent all over the world. Amitav Ghosh explores the ideas of nationhood and Diasporas ideas that involve relationships between individuals belonging to the same or to different communities that sometimes transgress and transcend the shadow lines of political borders. The Shadow Lines represents Ghosh’s most direct confrontation with nationalism and national identity and it is simultaneously about each character’s personal identity.