Politics of Transgression and Small Gestures (original) (raw)

Microstoria: Indian Nationalism's ''Little Stories'' in Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines

If imperialism is an ''act of geographical violence through which virtually every space in the world is explored, charted, and finally brought under control'', the primacy of the cartographic impulse in the anti-imperialist imagination is quite understandable. Cultures of resistance are seen to ''reclaim, rename and remap the land'' 1 in their move towards nationalist self-assertion. Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines examines the relevance of nationalism's concern with geographical restoration in the context of a new borderless, global landscape. 2 While acknowledging the contribution of nationalism in affirming the Indian people's identity during the Independence struggle, Ghosh attempts to fill up the gaps in nationalist histories by telling alternate revisionist stories, suppressed or elided by nationalism's dominant discourse, even as he interrogates the validity of the nation, nationalism and nationalist identity in an era of global capitalism. Following Benedict Anderson's idea of ''nations'' as ''imagined communities'', post-colonial commentators have rigorously investigated the nation, along with other ''narratives'', during the last two decades. 3 This contestation is most directly addressed in the works of the Subaltern Studies group and the historiographic fiction of Rushdie, Ghosh and others. In Imaginary Homelands, Rushdie raises the fundamental question, ''Does India exist,'' 4 which he unravels through the central metaphor of a nation's birth in Midnight's Children. 5 Rushdie emphasizes the ''mythical'' nature of the land calling it ''a country which would never exist except by the efforts of phenomenal collective will''. Like all myths, the reality of this one, too, is predicated on belief, ''a dream we all agreed to dream'', ''a mass fantasy shared in varying degrees by Bengali and Punjabi, Madrasi and Jat''. 5 Ghosh's reiteration of the ''invented'' nature of places-''a place does not merely exist, [. . .] it

“Step Across this Line”: Edges and Borders in Contemporary Indian Fiction

Etudes Anglaises, 2009

This essay proposes to analyse the ways in which contemporary Indian literature in English addresses the poetics of the border in the aftermath of colonialism and in the context of the new configurations of a global world viewed as a zone of transnational migrations but also as a place where communal divides are violently reasserted. On the one hand, Indian novels acknowledge the rigid lines and frames which define the individual, society and the nation, providing a sense of stability but also of fixity and enclosure. On the other hand, they suggest lines of flight which challenge binary divisions and arbitrary partitions, and favour instead the blurring and transgression of frontiers. Through this tension between the evocation and eradication of boundaries, Indian contemporary literature re-imagines the border as a contingent, transitory and fluid place, a space of becoming rather than a stable limit.

Space and Transnational Empathy in the Works of Bharati Mukherjee

The burgeoning presence of Indian Diaspora across the world has triggered a new consideration of the cultural theories of nation, identity and international affairs. Depicting the process of negotiating the borders, both physical borders of states and countries and the metaphorical borders, between genders generations and cultures, Bharati Mukherjee, an American writer of Indian origin, raises the question of space and identity of the Indian immigrants in the US. An attempt is made to map the journey of Indian Diaspora from the status of the immigrants to that of the transnational citizens of the world. Analysis of Mukherjee's characters, who mostly belong to the main stream of the third world and the margin of the first world, necessitates a close reading of the theories of post colonial studies and cultural studies . She endeavours to dive deep in to the distorted psyche of the migrants who are straddled between roof and root. The scope of this study lies in its treatment of t...

Impassable Cultural Borders in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies .docx

This paper sets out to discuss the mechanisms of cultural clashes as illustrated by three short stories included in Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies. By focusing on this topic, the present article aims to identify the main obstacles that prevent the (non)migrant, Indian and American characters from engaging with the difference of others. While global interconnectedness and the fluidity of borders are highly popular themes associated with fiction of migration, the present paper discusses a less theorised topic such as the failure to process cultural difference, despite the individuals’ increasing mobility. By adopting this approach, I intent to expand the existing body of research in the field of literature and migration, by foregrounding the relevance of fractured dialogues in the context of contemporary relocations from the East to the West. Besides offering possible explanations for the occurrence of cultural clashes, the present study implicitly formulates suggestions for minimising the distance between diverse sets of cultural norms. While discussing rigid perspectives, superficial interests or parallel outlooks, the paper signals the fact that crossing cultural borders is not always a natural effect of the transgression of physical frontiers. In this way, the present argument is an invitation to more nuanced interpretations of literary creations that deal with cultural encounters in the context of migration.

Exploring Transnational Identity and Borders in Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines

SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH, 2024

In contemporary Indian literature, post-independent writers grapple with the complexities of identity and nationhood amidst historical legacies such as partition, migration, displacement, and violence. These issues delve into the primal origins of people and their subsequent diasporic experiences, which challenge their cultural and societal identities. This paper aims to delve into the theme of transcending national identity in Amitav Ghosh’s novel, The Shadow Lines. Through the novel, Ghosh interrogates the construction of borders and national identities, probing the boundaries between people and the geographical landscapes they inhabit. Set against the backdrop of significant historical events like the freedom movement in Bengal, the Second World War, and the partition of India in 1947, the narrative spans three generations across three distinct cities—Calcutta, Dhaka, and London. The characters navigate diverse horizons, shaped by memories of traumatic historical events and nationalist struggles. Their journey from ‘Going Away’ to ‘Coming Home’ is marked by blurred lines between nations and families, symbolized as ‘Shadow Lines,’ transcending temporal and spatial borders in their diasporic experiences. Additionally, the paper delves into the intricacies of individual identity and the inner and outward conflicts arising from geographical dislocation and cultural disparities depicted in the novel.

Fight with/for the Right: An Analysis of Power-politics in Arundhati Roy’s Walking with the Comrades

The terms ‘Maoist’ and ‘Naxalite’ directly bring into one’s mind the image of a man with a gun in one hand and a sickle on the other. However, a generalization of casting them as “terrorists” is one thing that one must surely question. What prompts them to take up their arms and set out to kill outsiders and destroy what we proudly flaunt as ‘government’s property’? Is it a form of unjustified protest or a justified resistance? In a country, that is stated to be with over 421 million people living in a more impoverished state than all of sub -Saharan Africa, stated a report that was published as a part of research in 2010 at Oxford University, what can happen if there is a threat to basic livelihood. With the advent of the so called Corporate takeover of the natural resources in the forests there is no doubt that the tribals in that area are afraid to lose even the limited resources that are in their control. Arundhati Roy is a writer who has always traversed the territory of the downtrodden, either in her most glorified, Booker-winning fiction, The God of Small Things or her non-fiction works such as Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, Power Politics etc. A political activist and an environmentalist, she has dealt with issues of those whom we seldom give a second thought. This particular paper explores her standpoint through Walking with the Comrades which is a reflection of the social, political and most importantly the economic undertones of the government’s action in the contemporary context and the reaction/rebellion/resistance produced by the other side. The article discusses in detail the experiences of the author in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh as mentioned in the text and through her words analyse the situation of the tribals who are in constant fight for their right with the government.

Exploring the Illusive Borderlines: Construction of Identity in the Indian Subcontinent

The creation of borderlines demarcating the geographical boundary of the state has always problematized the discourse of nation incorporating the issues and debates of race, class, religion and historical events. It is also significant how it presents the ongoing process of the construction of personal ‘identity’ and the cultural determination of one’s selfhood. In the Indian subcontinent, the case is more interesting and complex as nation building takes place in heterogeneous, even fragmented lingual and cultural societies all over our country. The idea of ‘nation’ in the Subcontinent is much complicated, where the question of ethnicity and other forms of religious and political identities play a key role. My paper entitled “Exploring the Illusive Borderlines: Construction of Identity in the Indian Subcontinent” is a very modest attempt to get a glimpse into how the formation of borderlines by the partition of India delineates the construction of racial, religious and cultural ‘identity’ of an individual. This paper aims at studying few short stories like Intizar Husain’s “An Unwritten Epic”, Saadat Hasan Manto’s “Toba Tek Singh” and films like Srijit Mukherji’s “Rajkahini”, Deepa Mehta’s “Earth”, exploring the inherent complexities that arise while defining one’s identity, which is determined by one’s socio-cultural and religious position. The arbitrary lines that the British had drawn in order to divide the entire nation have resulted in the creation of two distinct and separate identities, which are hostile and inimical to each other. The Partition not only unleashed immense bloodsheds and communal riots, but also brought out the perplexity of the common masses to determine their ‘national’ identity that is predefined by their religion. Husain’s “An Unwritten Epic” portrays the character of Pichwa, who fought for the creation of Pakistan but unfortunately had to become a refugee there, leaving his homeland Qadirpur in India. This intense agony of Pichwa to locate his own native place is similar to Bishan Singh of Manto’s story “Toba Tek Singh”, who although being a Sikh refuses to go to India as his hometown Toba Tek Singh was situated in Pakistan, and eventually dying on the ‘no man’s land’. The brothel in Srijit Mukherji’s film “Rajkahini” is the epitome of a larger nation where the Radcliffe line has passed right through the courtyard. It depicts the complications that emerge while sundering the house into two, blending it with the Partition, demarcated by the illusive borderlines. The construction of identities of the subaltern people who fall on the trope of nation building is also a significant aspect. Deepa Mehta’s “Earth” reflects the transformation of a skeptical and liberal person into a religious fanatic roaming on the streets of Lahore with vengeance in his mind, witnessing the hatred originated by the creation of Pakistan. Considering the aforementioned texts, this study also interrogates the formation of distinct national and religious identities in the Subcontinent, at a time when it was taking root in the context of Partition and beyond. Keywords: Borderlines, Nation, Identity, Partition