Shadow Lines and The Concept of Nation

Shadow Lines and The Concept of Nation
A major issue of emphasis in Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Shadow Lines is

the notion of conceiving a nation, its boundaries and its identity. The author
believes that these boundaries are constructed, ethereal and arbitrary. These
Shadow Lines are just an illusion, a manifestation of the force of
nationalism, a force that Ghosh dreads being capable of inducing wanton
bloodshed.
Challenging the very idea of national borders, of any boundaries whatsoever,

acquires the pivotal place in the Shadow Lines. The author uses a narrative
style where the boundaries of time and space get blurred, the narrative
consistently moving from one country to another, from one time frame to
another.
In the novel, distances cease to have a corporeal meaning for the narrator,
who is shown to be disillusioned about the façade of boundaries.
The idea of considering nation as a myth or a fabrication like Benedict
Anderson and considering nationalism as harbinger of violence like Tagore
does, is embraced by the narrator.
The paper will deal with the ideas of nationalism associated with the
different characters in the novel.
Tridib, the narrator’s uncle is represented as a person with a global
consciousness. Blessed with a keen sense of imagination and perception, he
gives the narrator worlds to travel, even when he remains in Calcutta. He
exerts vast influence upon the people around him, especially the narrator.
Tridib identifies himself with Tristan, a man without a country who falls in
love with a woman across the seas. This identification seems to imply that
Tridib is without a country. But, why is that so?
The narrator believed that Tridib was happiest in places of neutrality. He

knows about a vast spectrum of things from Eastern European Jazz to the
Senna Dynasty. He was equally at ease with the Gole Park people as he was
with the Prices in London, falls in love with a foreigner. Does this
cosmopolitanism imply the fruitlessness of boundaries? Or does Ghosh fail
to look at the broader picture, where millions of people, not cosmopolites
like Tridib, who find solace within these lines?
Ila’s character is diametrically opposite to Tridib’s. She too has traveled
around the world, but unlike Tridib, who uses his imagination with
precision, she constructs a haven for herself from reality. She might be
considered a beauty by her relatives, she wishes to be good looking in
Anglo-Saxon terms. Her insecurity about her features gains a physical
representation via Magda, her doll having blonde hair, fair complexion and
blue eyes.
For her freedom means the ability to do whatever she wants. So, she
earnestly believes that she is free in England and not in India. Bit she is
definitely not free because she can't be free of the Indians of her features.
She cannot hide it by cutting her hair short or wearing western attire.
Though Ghosh believes in the uselessness of the boundaries, he cannot
wholly dismiss the differences between the countries. Even the notion of
beauty is dynamic with relation to a specific region.
The grandmother’s nationalism is treated as a relic from the past. Etched into
the grandmother’s psyche from the time of being under British rule is a
nationalism that rationalises killing for freedom. She strongly believes being
fidel to national boundaries.
She believes in the physical presence of a nation, in the physical nature of
boundaries, just like the wall that divided her old house in Dhaka. According
to her, a nation creates itself upon the bricks of blood and war, rising from a
history of bloodshed to its present existence. The partition has played a cruel
trick on her, rendering her without any coordinates of the place of her origin.
By depicting the effect of events in Srinagar as being of an equal intensity in

Dhaka and Calcutta, a world where Khulna existed nearer to Hanoi than
Srinagar, Ghosh depicts the irony of shadow lines created by the partition.
People in the bordering nations are surprised at looking at their mirror image
in their neighbouring country.
Like Toba Tek Singh, Tridib’s death questions the logic behind the partition.

Shadow Lines and The Concept of Nation

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Shadow Lines and The Concept of Nation

A major issue of emphasis in Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Shadow Lines is

Challenging the very idea of national borders, of any boundaries whatsoever,

The narrator believed that Tridib was happiest in places of neutrality. He

By depicting the effect of events in Srinagar as being of an equal intensity in

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