Page 17 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

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

I/other becomes difficult. Who is to be described as a perpetrator and who the victim becomes Notes
problematic for the state and also the reasons, if documented, subvert the idea of the idea of the
nation, therefore having no value for the governments as historical object. It is because of this
choice based reportage that history is said to have an underlying literary structure. In the event of
wars, on the other hand there is a well-defined enemy, a self-righteous we group and a legitimate
action that reaffirms our notions of nationhood and our projected ideology. So there is a glory to
wars, which is also violence, but one that makes sense within our defined notions of the ideas
described above.

1.5 Important Aspects of the Novel

1. Treatment of History
Simply put history is the recording of actions of human beings done in the past, however if
seen as a discipline that is specific to societies, one can see its significance as a disseminator of
ideas. The earlier definition sees the act of recording as essentially unproblematic which is
what has driven Western Historiography since Enlightenment when the content and
methodology of what constitutes the subject of history today first got formulated. It was only
in the twentieth century that this act of recording got problematised. Collingwood in Idea of
History (1946) was one of the early historians to shift the emphasis from the act of objective
recording outside events to the subjective realm of the historian’s mind. He saw history as the
record of past thoughts reenacted within the historian’s mind. According to him the knowledge
of an earlier era becomes possible with the historian projecting him (her) self into an earlier
context. He was also the first historian to see the past events with a greater sense of complexity
than as being easily understood and verifiable phenomenon that it was hitherto considered to
be. With the coming of what is called the Postmodernism the mode of History writing has also
been challenged. The postmodernists question the basic presumption of objectivity in history
writing. They argue that objectivity in a political discourse like history becomes impossible
because the position of the writer becomes aligned with power. Also the historian writes from
a point of view that he cannot wish away. Some thinkers like Hayden White have taken an
extreme position on this line of reasoning and have suggested a complete obliteration of the
line between history and fiction. History is written by a historian and made available to the
common people through history textbooks. Here what we look at is the power connotations of
history- that it flows from authority to the common people. Also the traditional subject matter
of history has been the conquests of the kings and the kingdoms. As a result the traditional
history writing has essentially been about kings (replaced by powerful governments in recent
times) written by court (state-approved) historians in the public chronicles (textbooks). When
we consider these problems of history writing, other sources of writing history emerge. In
recent times the school of Subaltern studies has provided a solution. The word “Subaltern”
literally means subordinate or low-ranking. What these historians have done is attempted to
rewrite the Indian history from the perspective of the common people. The power of the pen is
shifted from the “court historian” to the traditionally less powerful common people. The
historians under Subaltern studies also make use of unconventional sources like stories, kissas,
folktales, songs etc. to uncover a past written by those in power. In recent time a sense of acute
skepticism has come to play in our understanding of historical reconstructions which has
abundantly got reflected in our literature. Salman Rushdie in presenting to us his story through
Saleem Sinai of Midnight’s Children consciously ascribes to him statements that are half-truths
and at other times completely false.
This deliberate injecting of falsehood in the story is a strategy to evoke mistrust in the reader
who is indirectly made aware of unreliability of all sources. These new authors have signalled
death of the once existent sage-authors, the know-all reservoirs brimming with all the knowledge
of all the world. What reads like a Shakespearean anachronism (the famous one being about
chiming clocks in Greek times in Julius Caesar!) is confirmed in course as being deliberate and
intended. The book uses the analogy of the perforated sheet where it acts as a screen for the
doctor to examine the diseased body of a beautiful noble lady. The perforated sheet allows the

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 11