Friday 6 April 2012


Assignment- Indian Writing in English
Topic- Themes in “The Shadow Line”
Name- Sumra Jitendra V.
SEM – 2
Batch- 2011-12  


Submitted to,
Dr.Dilip Barad
Bhavnagar University,
Bhavnagar

Themes of “The Shadow lines”


In the Shadow lines, she interrogates the aestheticism of colonial and nationalist historiography by, on the one hand, emphasize the fictions that people create their lines, and on the other recording the vivid and verifiable that do not necessarily correspondent with the documented version of history. As the narrator say, ‘Stories are all there are to in, it was just a question which one you chose.” As  and whom like Amitav Ghosh’s the shadow line, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic verses and Anita Desai’s In custody show , the Indian novel in English is exploration of the historical transformations of community life, instead of  drawing Jameson “portraits’ of sensitive individuals, under the  community, the individual under  the sway of larger movements of history.”
The author creates a realm that melds pre independence India, Brittan in the Second World War and post independence India. Amitav Ghosh undertakes the task of establishing the futility of all sorts of barrios, or ‘Shadow lines”. As one of the subaltern studies scholars, shall mayoral, reminds us, during the partition of Indian various state authorities rigidified borders and boundaries that were once flexible and people were coerced to for one nation or the other, India or Pakistan, or one religious identity or the other, Hindu or Muslim.
 The Shadow lines, however, is especially notable because it the agonies and ruptures of that period in such poignant detail, It also underlines the challenges of cultural dislocation and ambiguous citizenship, and highlights the illusions of militant nationalisms.
In this novel, the unnamed narrator’s nationalist grandmother, Thamma, articulates an unambiguous understanding of the violence in the making of nations in the shadow lines when she takes about the creation of Britain.
Amitav Ghosh’s novel narrators the story of three generations of the unnamed narrators family. Spread over Dhaka, Calcutta, and London. The narrative begins in colonial India and concludes just after the creation of East Pakistan in the 60s.the story highlights private and public events and their significances as they bring the characters into relief. The shadow lines describes a period that  goes back to colonial India, prior to the  birth of  the narrators, a cousin of the narrators father, Tridib, has withes the gruesome  partition of India and the corollary creation of Pakistan in 1947.
The novel begins with a passage about the happenings in colonial India”  in 1939 thirteen years before  I was born ,my  fathers aunt mayadebi, went to England  with her  husband and her son , Tridib”  the plot  begins in the  second world war ends in 1964 with the political  upheaval caused by the outbreak  of communal riots in  India and Pakistan.  
The story revolves around Tridib, who is taken to England by his parents in 1939, at the age of eight and then in 1964 dies a victim of communal frenzy in Dhaka. As the opening  sentence  indicates, the beginning of the narrative takes  place thirteen  years  before the narrators birth , and  thus his knowledge  of the ravages of  the second world war comes to him through  Tridib’s  recapitulations. The borders that were at the time carved out by the authorities at the time of partition have led to further brutally in the form of those  rats , programs , and organized historical  distortions and cultural  depletions  with which the history  of independent India is replete. Hindu as well as Muslims leaders.
The shadow lines are the crossing of frontiers of nationality, culture, and language in three countries, India, East Pakistan [Now Bangladesh] and England. To that list the author’s attempts to cross the barriers of citizenship as a self conscious political philosophy. Amitav Ghosh makes the reader aware of the humanist response that transcends national boundaries and barriers.  

2 comments:

Manisha Savani said...

Hi
your Assignment is very well and you write short but write very interesting.

Nargis Saiyad said...

Hello Jitenra! You described well all the themes but there is one misunderstanding that you used 'she' for Amitav Ghose but actually he is male novelist.