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Unit 1: Amitav Ghosh; Shadow Lines: Introduction to the Text

in clandestine extremism with the larger goal of Independence in mind. At the same time as a Notes
product of Western Education, her idea of Nation as an entity is borrowed in its entirety from
England. She tends to associate gory wars passion, sacrifice and blood baths with the creation and
grandeur of nations. ‘War is their (the English) religion. That’s what it takes to make a country.
Once that happens people forget they were born this or that…that’s what you have to achieve for
India.’ She particularly likes her nephew Robi who, according to her, has besides, a fine education
a fine body that is essential for the enterprise of nation building. To the fact that she is a dislocated
Bengali (from the Eastern side) she does not pay much attention and like a typical middle class
character is too involved in matters of livelihood to bother about these issues. Life is simple for
her- she believes in the values of honesty and hard work and has been a tremendously scrupulous
teacher and mother. She believes so completely in the ideal of hard work that when she meets her
poor migrant relatives she can think of no other reason but lack of hard work as the reason for
their penury. She gives no thought to the event of Partition that is partly responsible for the
dislocation and destitution of the family. It is only when she plans to visit her sister in Dhaka and
when she has to undergo the usual procedure of compiling her immigration papers that she is
jolted into recognizing the reality of the Partition of her state. The author here delves into the
whole idea behind physical and psychological spaces. Here the author talks of Phantom distances
through the shadow lines that the state machinery creates in order to reinforce the idea of nation.
Whereas in a large country like India where diversity abounds in every aspect of cultural, economic,
social and linguistic existence nationhood is imposed over these imagined communities and
ironically where communities exist naturally (like in the pre-partitioned Bengal) they are thrown
apart with barbed wire fencing, passports and papers reinforcing a much greater psychological
distance between the two. Her visit to her erstwhile home in Dhaka also turns out to be poignant
in ways more than one. Her uncle (father’s brother) is the only one languishing in that house
because he is completely out of touch with reality and refuses to believe the fact that the country
has split. Here the author echoes the idea of collective madness and normalcy. Whereas the uncle
who refuses to believe in the Partition of the country is labelled mad by the so called normal
people, it is in a way a collective madness that has endorsed the highly abnormal act of Partition
and then driven the non conformists to the edge of madness. This old man also portrays the
violence that history perpetrates. Whereas this violence is a part of the life of all the people who
underwent the distresses of dislocation during Partition, it can only find an expression through
the grotesque means of madness. And there is escape from it also through madness. The character
of Tha’mma is crucial to the narrative in the manner in which it brings out some of these concepts
and also provides a rallying point around which other ways of looking at these are built. Tha’mma
embodies a conventional even though interesting belief system, which is challenged by the other
characters as well as the novelist himself. For most part of the book she comes across as a frugal,
no-nonsense woman for whom any wastage of time or money is abhorrence. She is a principled
old woman whose views on nation and nation building are remarkably simplistic. She doesn’t
consider herself as a migrant belonging to the other side of the border; she has no sympathy for
her refugee relatives living in a state of utter penury. Her notions of nation, nation building are
straight from history books. She considers healthy young people like Robi as ideal nation builders.
She is remarkably free from all traces of cynicism so evocative of victims of partition.
She does not consciously criticize the phenomenon of Partition even once, there are no lengthy
harangues: her critique of the Partition, nation and nationalism lies in her anecdotes. Often it is the
anecdotes and the personal experiences that make her acknowledge the cracks and contradictions
in her beliefs. Tha’mma as a child in Dhaka house makes stories about the disputed upside down
house (the other half of the house occupied by the uncle’s family) The artificial constructedness of
the ‘otherness’ of the house is very evident and many critics have seen it as a foretaste of a similar
exercise that the state indulges in when the Partition of a nation has to be justified and difference
has to be created if it does not exist. The two nations just like the two parts of a household were
united at one time but the course of history (or failure of vision) divides them and for sustaining
their separation the difference has to be created. The case of the Partition of the Indian subcontinent
has been very different because the state has been forced to create a difference where none existed
and show the two nations as inherently opposed.

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