Deconstructing the Dialectics of Difference: Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines

Abstract

While addressing 75th session of Indian History Congress on 28th December, 2014, Dr Hamid Ansari, Vice President of India, cautioned the historians against propagating a homogenous national identity, since the idea of a homogenous nation state is clearly problematic’ (The Tribune, 29th Dec., 2014). The history of the Indian subcontinent has been a witness to this shifting and shuffling idea of identity over the years. These differing narratives of identity created grounds for the division of pre-independence India into two nations and caused further disintegration of Pakistan with the creation of a new state Bangladesh. There have also been other secessionist voices raising a clamour for separatism on the basis of claims constituted on ethnic, racial or linguistic lines, thus creating seeds of conflict within already established units. A close critical appraisal of the Postcolonial literature too foregrounds a tremendous amount of tensions and complexities around the very interpretative axis of the term ‘identity’ and its epistemological framework. What one witnesses there is a wide range of variation in the constructed narratives of identity, supposedly founded on the basis of national and cultural similarities. It is these shifts and stresses which the writers of the new literature often attempt to underline through their creative narratives.