Un-bordering Boundaries: A study of Amitav Ghosh’s The

Shadow Lines

Dr Sharmistha De Dutta
Assistant Professor, Dr. B.C Roy Engineering College, Durgapur
West Bengal
India

I
In recent years, the problems and possibilities of borders and boundaries ── of questioning,
crossing, transgressing, reconfiguring, dismantling and indeed inhabiting borders and border
spaces ── have become an increasing preoccupation for theoretical discourses and a wide
variety of fields.
Ambreem Hai 1

In a world crisscrossed by national boundaries, the migratory movements have brought new
dimensions to the lived experience of men and women. In the ‘postcolonial’ period
‘migrations’ of various natures , aided and supported by faster means of communications,
have put the two words ── ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ ── in a position of contestation. There has
emerged a class of people ---‘world citizens’ --- comprising, among others, creative writers
and literary/cultural critics who project the tensions between ideas represented by the words
‘roots’ and ‘routes’. ‘Routes’ naturally imply outward movements and exploration and
mapping of new territories, just the opposite of ‘roots’ which implies stability in a particular
territorial, social and cultural locale. The words also indicate different mindsets ── while
‘roots’ is basically local and exclusive in essence, the other (‘routes’) is open to outside
influences. It is because on the emphasis on the word ‘routes’ that cartography figures so
prominently in many of the recent writings 2. As a result of this migratory movement, the
issue of crossing ‘border’ ── both literally and metaphorically ── has often been
foregrounded. Attempts are being made to interrogate the fixity of the ‘border’ which stands
for artificially created barriers that prevent and limit cultures that travel. The basic argument
is that deliberately imposed borders are really ‘shadow lines’, that cultures and human

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relationship reach out for interactions with others and defy all attempts of putting
demarcation lines.
In an article, Ambreem Hai maintains that recent postcolonial writings are concerned
not only with“‘boundary crossing’ (which takes border to be a signifier of division constraint
or limitation), but also border inhabitation”. Living on the border signifies living where the
spaces overlap. Hai asserts that such border inhabitation “regards the border itself (and the
subjectivity of those positioned on the border) as a crucial if ambiguous site of vital
reconstruction, a position replete with contradictions and difficulty, but regenerative
promise”.3 In the context of recent writings, therefore, straddling two or more worlds,
territorial or cultural, is seen positively, as giving birth to new identities that are dynamic and
hybrid. This interstitial border space, according to Bhabha, provides “the terrain for
elaborating strategies of selfhood ── singular or communal ── that initiate new signs of
identity, and innovative sites of collaboration and contestation in the act of defining the idea
itself” 4. Bhabha remarks that “it is the space of intervention emerging in the cultural
interstices, that introduces creative invention into existence” (9)5. Encounter between cultures
creates a space for experimentation and creativity that is not possible in a state of rootedness
── seeking new routes gives way to the possibilities for creative innovation. Such writings
are, in a sense, border writings, which, according to Hai, “arises from the heterogeneity of
multiple cultural effects”.6 An acute sense of difference in a multi -ethnic society may lead to
polarization. Denial of any scope for interaction leads to monologic mindset which gives
birth to binarism. But a heterogeneous society is an appropriate space for dialogic
imagination in the Bakhtinian sense. An individual or even a community located in a border
space is a site of dialogues between perspectives. Ambreem Hai asserts that border writing
arises from “heterogeneity of multiple cultural effects” as already mentioned. It is located in
border regions of heterogeneous cultures “bearing the marks and carrying the benefits of
historical overlay”(381). Border work, then, according to Hai, can offer “crucial perspectival
shifts because it can undo binaristic and hierarchical categories of opposition, offering useful
critique and reconceptualisation of either side of an opposition ── be it cultural, political or
intellectual” (381). Recent postcolonial works often subvertly tend to negotiate the
contradictions of cultural heterogeneity, modernity, nationalism or diasporic identity. Mary
Poovey notes that the notion of the “in-between” is a politically useful strategy for
“dismantling binary thinking.”7
James Clifford in his article “The Transit Lounge of Culture” suggests that such
Diaspora cultures are not oriented towards lost origin or homelands, but they are created by
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continuous process of ongoing migratory histories and its transitional cultural flows. Clifford
argues that the moment we begin to focus on these intercultural processes, the notion of
separate, discrete cultures evaporates. We thus become aware that all cultures definitely have
long histories of border crossings, diasporas and migrations.8
Amitav Ghosh’s work explores how such border crossings take place in the present
and took place even in the past. Such endeavours, as he shows, need not be colonial and
hegemonic in nature. This paper intends to show how Ghosh in his novel, The Shadow Lines
problematises the concept of ‘borders’ and tries to maintain that man-made borders are
basically porous. The paper thus will try to investigate how Amitav Ghosh takes up the issue
of geographical borders, deterritorialisation and problematisation of identity arising out of the
emergence of new cultural and territorial borders and defiance of such borders through
‘migratory’ movements.

II
In the geography of human history no culture is an island…..not
independent but distinctive and singular and precisely because of
that enmeshed with its neighbours in an intricate network of
differences.
--- Amitav Ghosh9

Amitav Ghosh’s second novel The Shadow Lines (1988), like his other novels, interrogates
the concept of boundary as we usually understand the word. Ghosh’s treatment of the theme
undercuts the received opinions about nation, nationality, home, family and so on. Normally,
homogeneity is imposed on units and institutions like family, religion, nation and differences
are swept under the carpet. Ghosh shows how fissures appear within the units, thereby putting
the unity and credibility of such classifications into question. Pinning down any fixed
meaning/definition to any unit appears to be naïve; the ideas of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’
are usually accepted as the norms of establishing units and differentiating one unit from
another. These are, therefore, the norms for drawing borders. Ghosh employs the metaphor of
“shadow lines” to suggest the unreliability and even absurdity of the practice of drawing the
borderlines. To divide community and cultures into fixity is to deny the possibilities of
interaction. According to Ghosh, culture is not independent and its routes always trace
history. In such a way different cultures come across one another to get intersected and
barriers between different cultures get blurred. In the final act of the novel The Shadow Lines,
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such a meeting of two cultures ─── Indian and British ─── are exhibited by the sexual
encounter and emotional bond between the narrator and May Price on the last night of the
former’s stay in London through which he is granted “the glimpse of …a final redemptive
mystery” (252). The mystery, according to Dixon, is of “lived human experience that
transcends the artificial borders of nation and race”. 10 The Shadow Lines is basically a novel,
which deals with three families spread over three countries across the world viz. Dhaka,
Calcutta, and London. The three families speak their own experiences of cultural, religious
and national differences / indifferences along the generations. Written against the backdrop of
civil strife in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and riot-hit Calcutta, the novel reveals during
its course the various traumas and crisis faced by the immigrants and the left-over natives in
East Pakistan. It also tries to show that such communal riots do not have borders; they spread
like wildfire and cross territorial borders. Thus a communal riot in Srinagar has its effects in
Dhaka. The geographical borders between Dhaka and Srinagar thus seem to evaporate.
The events in the novel revolve basically around Maya Devi’s family, their friendship
with the English friends the Prices, and Thamma, the narrator’s grandmother and Maya
Devi’s elder sister. The novel deals with the experiences and links with her ancestral city
Dhaka. The narration revolves around different decades and also covers the riots of 1964
which killed Maya Devi’s uncle ‘Jhethamoshai’, Tridib, the central protagonist of the novel,
and Khalil, the rickshaw puller. Their deaths seem to shroud the issue of intercultural
understanding and friendship in contemporary social structures divided by vague lines called
national boundaries. The novel thus revolves around two families – The Datta – Chaudhuries
of Bengal and the Prices in London. And in the cross-transactional attribute between these
two families and their generations, Ghosh’s novel tries to interrogate the concept of
boundary. As A.N. Kaul explains in his essay:
towards the end the story also crosses the newly created frontier
between India and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), engaging or
acknowledging along the way the proximate presence of other
foreign countries and continents through the Indian diplomatic and
UN posting of the Datta – Chaudhuris. (300) 11
In The Shadow Lines, Amitav Ghosh tries to show how cultures of different nations intersect
one another. There is always some scope to find a common space where this intersection
takes place. When such a space is forged, the geographical boundaries artificially created by
men collapse. An evidence of this artificially created border can be found in the novel.
“Thamma” (the narrator’s grand mother), a significant character in the novel, is bewildered
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not to find any obvious signs of demarcation lines or trenches at the Indo-Bangladesh border.
She is going to Dhaka from Calcutta to visit her uncle (Jhethamoshai) who had all along been
refusing to leave his ‘home’ in Dhaka and to cross over to Calcutta after partition. A common
man’s expectation about the existence of demarcation lines between two nations is also
present in ‘thamma’. Nations try to impose all kinds of restrictions like passports, visa etc. to
create a sense of uniqueness of a nation and its difference from others. Such restrictions are
basically political in nature, and are often the signifiers of deeply embedded animosities
towards the ‘other’. While going to Dhaka the grandmother flies over the border but fails to
see any demarcation lines like trenches that should have neatly divided the two territories
belonging to two countries. As an old-fashioned nationalist she has internalized the
philosophy of division on the basis of some principle of differences. Therefore she looks for
the external divisionary lines:
…If there aren’t any trenches or anything how are people to know?
I mean what is the difference then? And if there’s no difference
both sides will be the same; it will just be like it used to be before
(154, emphasis added).
The grandmother thus is very much confused about the non-existence of the border. She at
the same time feels, at one with, and alienated from Dhaka. The mere geographical border
does seem to be irrelevant and artificial when she realizes that there is no big difference
between living in Calcutta or in Dhaka. Its all the same in both the places. Hence the spatial
border is baseless and becomes rather dissolved. Thus it has been pointed out, “In view of the
persistent interfusion of spaces, the titles of the two parts of the book – ‘Going Away’ and
‘Coming Home’ becomes ironical because the impression that emerges from Ghosh’s
handling of experiences is that one can neither ‘go away’ nor ‘come home’.” 12 the concept of
‘home’ is problematised in the text. For Thamma, Dhaka where she was born and brought up,
is the ‘home’ ── she is emotionally associated with the place. Nevertheless political events
and religious difference combined to dislodge her from her birthplace and shifted her to
Calcutta where she tried to re-root herself. She is thus confused and disillusioned about the
identity of her ‘home’. Her disillusionment increases while mentioning her birthplace, which
is where she intends to go, but now as she crosses the borders the idea of ‘home’ indeed
becomes problematical. As Anjali Gera argues, the term ‘home’ or ‘desh’ basically denotes
the identity of the regional place. The term can further be narrowed down to a much smaller
place of belonging if any specific location is demanded. 13

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 Like thamma, her uncle, ‘Jhethamoshai’ is also confused about the idea of one’s roots
or even ‘home’. Refusing to go back to Calcutta as because Dhaka is no longer his home or
nation, he says:
I don’t believe in this India – Shindia it’s all very well you are
going away now but suppose when you get there they decide to
draw another line somewhere? What will you do then? (215,
emphasis added)
‘Jhethamoshai’, here, is actually speaking of the arbitrariness of drawing the boundary lines.
These lines do not exist anywhere. They are ‘decided’ and imposed. The speaker questions
the wisdom of such imposition ── in fact he refuses to accept the arbitrarily drawn
demarcation lines. To him, home is where he was born and brought up ── the cultural
environment he was part of. Any attempt to tear him apart from the roots is contested.
Amitav Ghosh thus tries to interrogate the very existence of man-made boundaries or
even more precisely, demarcations in very aspect of human lives ── be it nation, culture,
religion, or relations ── through different episodes in the novel. Each of these units may be
distinct but this distinction is no bar to creating understanding. Ghosh also tries to focus on
the specificity of cultures whose rootedness in geography and history often creates an
impression of its basic difference from other cultures. But at the same time he seems to show
that cultures are porous and they intersect. This intersection of different cultures takes place
throughout the novel in various modes, across time and space. Time and space are however
two essential elements in The Shadow Lines.
Time and space, according to Ghosh are also shadows. A.N Kaul rightly claims
“despite its careful chronology and topography, The Shadow Lines may be said to ‘happen’ in
all places.... They are no isolated or isolable spots if time or place.”14 In the text of The
Shadow Lines Ghosh deals with time in such a way that his narrative moves flexibly between
past and present and tend to merge the temporal boundary. Time is conceived to be in flux.
Similarly, Ghosh treats the theme of space in the same way so that the spatial distance is
somewhat neutralized.
The story of The Shadow Lines constantly divides and at the same time links people and
nation, thereby attempting to show the vagueness of the existence of such boundaries. In
Imaginary Homelands Salman Rushdie raises the fundamental question: “Does India exist
?”15 and unravels the riddle through the central metaphor of a nation’s birth in Midnight’s
Children. The Shadow Lines has a narrative which spans from 1939 to 1979 or even beyond,
and which depends largely on the division along both sides of the border.
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 Thamma, along with Tridib, May, Robi and Mayadebi go to rescue Jethamoshai and it
is only then Thamma realizes that she may have been born in Dhaka but she is now a
foreigner. With the passage of time one nation (India) has become two (India and Pakistan).
Differences between these two nations were magnified and artificial borders were created.
Thus the very significance of borders between nations gets questioned and Thamma finds
herself to be an alien in the geographical space which was her own ‘home’ in the past. Once
she lived there and even fought for a nationhood that would be free from all colonial control.
She could not imagine at that time that her idea of a single nation would be subverted within
and that her notion of a nation contained seeds of fragmentation. What at a particular
historical moment may seem to be the ‘truth’ may ultimately turn out to be a falsity under
different historical situation.
In The Shadow Lines the development and growth of Thamma’s character
encapsulates the futility and meaninglessness of political freedom, which was otherwise
supposed to usher in an era of peace and prosperity for all. During the days of her childhood
and youth she had sympathies for all those fighting for the cause of freedom. In fact she too
wanted to earn a share of glory by running secret errands for some of her classmate
“terrorists” or even cooking for them and washing their clothes. It is interesting to note that
Thamma here sees her role limited to ‘feminine contribution’. She has internalized the
domesticated role of the woman, even when she goes out of her domestic boundary. She is
subservient to the patriarchal discourse that runs within the nationalist agenda. She,
nevertheless, wants to contribute to the nationalist agenda. In response to a question by the
narrator “Do you really mean Thamma that you would have killed them?” Thamma says:
…I would have been frightened …But I would have prayed for
strength, and God willing, yes I would have killed him [The
English Magistrate]. It was for our freedom. I would have done
anything to be free. (39, emphasis added)
The irony implicit in the reference to ‘our freedom’ is revealed when it turns out later that the
nationalist unity evident during the freedom struggle collapses under the pressure of
communal politics. India became two nations, and an ‘other’, as distinct from ‘us’ ── the
same emerged from this ‘we’ simply on the basis of religious otherness. As history later
demonstrated, another nation ── Bangladesh ── came out of the second nation ── Pakistan
── on the basis of linguistic difference. Hence the absurdity of forming a unit on the basis of
apparent homogeneity comes out of such developments. At the same time artificial
classification or division is proved to be no solution. There is no solution in the act of
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magnifying divisions ── within every division there are other divisions. It is better to find
out common grounds of dialogues among distinct units. Novy Kapadia rightly points out:
By exploring connections, distinctions, and possibilities, Amitav
Ghosh shows that in a changing world different strands of
nationalism and ideology will exist and even compete. The force of
nationalism in the quest for freedom or ideology is often a source
of violence…so the “Shadow Lines” between people and nations is
often mere illusions. The force and appeal of nationalism cannot be
wished away (so easily), just as death by a communal mob in the
bye – lanes of Old Dhaka. 16
Nationalism as the course of the novel demonstrates has also a divisionary effect. Thamma’s
kind of nationalism can only lead to violence and make the borders permanent. One must go
beyond nationalism and consider other people’s perspectives as well. Dhaka has been
Thamma’s births place but her nationality is ironically or incidentally Indian. As a young girl
she has thought of fighting for ‘National’ freedom in East Bengal. But it is an irony that those
very same people for whom she was willing to lay down her life are ‘enemies’ now in 1964.
The grandmother’s very desire for firm physical boundaries begins in one way to unravel her
faith in the stability of “National Identities”17 as Jon Mee points out. She (the grand mother)
sees national identities not in the terms of “Imagined communities” but as connectedness to a
place ── which is deeply rooted ── a place which is borne out of the sacrifices of
generation by blood. Feelings of nationalism had after all motivated the fight in Khulna
against the British. But in 1964, the group of Indians travelling in the embassy car are the
enemies to be hunted down and killed. Ghosh, by pointing out the different perspectives of
national movements, tries to show that the national space, which is the site for the different
movements, remains the same. Only ‘time’ changes the focus and perspective.
Partition between two nations led to the basic confusion ── about the very roots of
one’s origin ── and thus an individual’s identity gets questioned. Leaving Dhaka during the
partition had obviously meant severing the old roots and groping for a new kind of identity.
Therefore, years later when Thamma visited Dhaka, she was distressed to consider Dhaka as
her place of birth: “She liked things to be neat and in place ── and at that moment she had
not been able to quite understand how her place of birth had come to be so messily at odds
with her nationality”(152). Finally, the fact that “the border is not on a frontier: it’s right
inside the airport” (151) puzzles Thamma all the more and she feels that her sacrifice had
been in vain. Lying sick in her bed, she feels that war, partition and violence are meaningless
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if there is no physical demarcation. Memory of Old Dhaka, which Thamma had left behind,
remain the same, denying any possibility of change that time may bring about. Changes that
had taken place have a disorienting effect. Time erases old Dhaka, which is present only in
memory. New Dhaka has in the mean time developed a new orientation and now witnesses a
new sub–national (religious) identity that is in direct conflict with the nationalist sprit of the
earlier time. Religious sub-nationalism was at one time the basic factor in bringing about the
partition of the country, thereby being an agent of division. The show of unity propped up by
nationalism, which prospered during the colonial period, is thus proved to be temporary and
fragmentation of the old nations and the borderlines between the new nations have become a
reality. Dhaka incidents proved that. But Ghosh narrates stories of human relationship at the
micro level that want to prove the unreliability of new borders.
Nationalism draws a demarcation line, imposes unity on heterogeneous elements
within the nation. It differentiates itself from other nations and blood is supposed to be
instrumental in the formation of a nation. The grand mother’s idea of nationalism constitutes
of almost all the characteristics of nationalism mentioned by Hutchinson and Smith:
Nationalism is first of all a doctrine of popular freedom and
sovereignty. The people must be liberated ── that is freed from
any external constraints; they must determine their own destiny
and be masters in their own house; they must control their own
resources; they must obey only their inner voice. But that entailed
fraternity. The people must be united; they must dissolve all
internal divisions; they must be gathered together in a single
historic territory, a homeland; and they must have legal equality
and share a single public culture.18
It was the lure of freedom from the colonial rule that ingrained the feeling of nationalism in
her (Thamma). Thamma tells the narrator how she was fascinated “by the stories she had
heard about the terrorist, work for them in a small way, steal a little bit of their glory for
herself” (89). Her efforts to strengthen the unity of the country range from making girls in her
school “Cook one dish that was speciality of some part of the country other than her own”
(116), to craving for a war that would make people forget that they were “Born Muslims or
Hindus, Bengali or Punjabi: they become a family, born of the same pool of blood” (78).
Sacrifice for the country is for her the ultimate unifying force. Thamma thus possessed a
feeling of oneness among people within a nation. But as Robi points out, small groups within
the nation also move towards fragmentation in the name of freedom:
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 You know if you look at the pictures in the front pages of the
newspapers at home now, all those pictures of dead people ── in
Assam, in north–east Punjab, Sri Lanka, Tripura ── people shot
by terrorists and separatists and the army and the police, you’ll find
somewhere behind it all, that single word; everyone was doing it to
be free (246)
Ila leaves her family in India and goes to England believing that, by physically living
there and by adopting the style of the West, she would be nativized over there. But Ila’s
search for freedom turns out to be elusive. She remains an outsider in England because of her
skin complexion. Thamma who has better sense of ‘home’ and ‘nation’ thus resents Ila and
exclaims that “she doesn’t belong there. She has no right to be there.” (82). Thamma argues
that Ila can never belong to England for “everyone who lives there has earned his right to be
there with blood: with their brother’s blood and with their father’s blood and their son’s
blood. They know they are a nation because they have drawn their borders with blood. War is
their religion.” (78) Consequently, a country to define itself, needs borders of its own. Thus a
nation is basically defined in opposition to other nations, particularly to its neighbours. But
Thamma’s nation gets questioned when she is forced to find her “place of birth at odds with
her nationality” (151). She is unable to understand the concept of boundaries. Little does she
realize that the boundary demarcating the two countries India and East Pakistan is only a
‘shadow line’.
Ila marries Nick but her marriage proves to be a disaster and she feels lost and
rootless until she clings to Robi and the narrator’s arms and her family members in India.
Nick’s betrayal makes Ila realize that a mental crossover is involved in the process of
adoption of a new home / land for the exile. The resistance to acceptance of the other must
also be kept in mind. Ila breaks away from her family for a cosmopolitan way of life in
London for personal freedom. But her brand of freedom is questioned in the text. The whole
concept of freedom is problematised by Robi and again it is Robi himself who tries to
question the idea of freedom and feels that “if freedom were possible, surely Tridib’s death
would have set me free” (247). Instead what Ghosh intends to say is that freedom cannot be
achieved by drawing demarcation lines; but people wrongly try to draw borders in an attempt
to be free. The quest for freedom is basically a “vision” which according to Rashmi Varma
“questions the relevance of freedom both on private and public levels.”19 Again Tridib who
has grown up witnessing India’s partition and creation of Pakistan has the ability to invent
and experience old places (nations) in his imagination. An archaeologist, he bridges the gap
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between Calcutta and London through his account of stay in London. Tridib, therefore, longs
for a place “where there was no border between oneself and one’s image in the mirror” (29).
He even fires the young narrator’s imagination with a longing to know everything not
through scholarship but through the use of his extraordinary imaginative powers with the help
of which the narrator travels widely along the geographical spaces thereby attempting to
correlate one distinct space with some other.
Novy Kapadia rightly asserts: “characters intermingle not as members of distinct
cultures but as complex individuals in a world where geographical boundaries have truly
become ‘shadow lines’. These borders are mirrors, not of people’s differences but their
similarities. They present images that are both beautiful and ── in the case of the riots that
become a climactic event in the book ── horrific.20 Two of Tridib’s stories point out the fact.
The first one is about his mother Mayadebi’s conversation with Lionel Tresawsen. She had
gone to London in 1939 for her husband’s operation and had stayed with Tresawsen’s
daughter Mrs. Price. Mayadebi had observed that the looming war had made people behave
charitably towards others. Tresawsen who had returned from Germany responds, “people
don’t believe me…but it’s the same over there ── in Germany ── though of course in a
much more grotesque way. It was odd coming back here ── like stepping through a looking-
glass”(66). The image effectively communicates the similarity in the reaction of people
although they belong to two ‘different’ warring nations. Viewed from this perspective the
border between two nations ── be that Germany and England or England and India or India-
Bangladesh ── becomes a “looking glass border”.
Rama Kundu describes this idea of merging borders through the game of ‘Houses’ played by
Ila and the narrator in The Shadow Lines. Ila and the narrator play ‘Houses’ under a huge
table in a dusty room. Ila draws a line, the narrator cannot accept it. He erases a line, draws
another. This drawing and re-drawing of borders implicates a strong notion which Ghosh
wants to convey: that borders are fluid and a smooth crossing-over is always possible. Ghosh,
through the game of House, aptly “interrogates the very basis of such demarcating or dividing
‘lines’ as may have been drawn up by the metanarratives of historical-cultural continuums.”21
The title ‘Shadow Lines’ itself reflects in the final analysis that there is no solid space
either geographically or culturally. The title reflects the existences of various spaces only as
abstractions ── blurring into one another: alien space blurring into native space; cultural
space into geographical space. Space, Ghosh shows, is a pure abstraction built up by psychic,
political and cultural constructs. Space along with time has no absolute concrete demarcation
and can move to and fro freely without any constraint. Time and space can be designated
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only by shadow lines. Arvind Chowdhary, speaking of temporality in the novel, rightly
claims that “the traditional concepts of time and space, understood in terms of distance and
division or borders gets questioned in the course of this journey into the past”22 As
Meenakshi Mukherjee says: “Time in this novel can be illusory and concrete at the same time
and likewise space can be fluid even when held solidly within the concrete scaffolding of a
23
house or confirmed within the firm outlines etched a national boundaries on a map” The
narrator has this realization and upholds the notion he carried within himself about space:
I believed in the reality of space; I believed that distance
separates, That it is corporeal substance; I believed in the reality
of nations and borders; I believed that across the borders the there
existed another reality. The only relationship my vocabulary
permitted between those separated realities was war or friendship.
(219)
The narrator’s notion gets gradually reversed when he realizes the fragile nature of borders.
Kavita Daiya rightly points out that The Shadow Lines ultimately “reveal the fragility of
partitions, borders between nations as etched out in maps and of frontiers policed by nation
states that separate people, communities and families.” However, Ghosh does not intend “to
celebrate globalization” as Daiya says, but wants to argue that “communities are transnational
through the work of historical memory.” Ghosh suggests that “the nature of boundaries can
be understood through the metaphor of the looking glass: the national border between the
people of India and West Pakistan resembles the mirror’s boundary, in which the self and
reflected other are the same (joined by visual and corporal simultaneity).” Therefore, Daiya
says that “in Ghosh’s narrative, the borderline cannot destroy the fundamental identity of
people on both sides of the boundary or render their changed into ‘the other’.” 24
In The Shadow Lines, Ghosh questions the validity of national boundaries artificially imposed
by man to demarcate national or regional differences between countries. Thus, it is evident
from the discussion that Ghosh has interrogated the permanence of borders and spoke for the
fluidity of demarcation lines. The Shadow Lines aptly demonstrate that border is a mental
construct, imposed on the human society through the ages.

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Notes and References
1. Ambreem Hai, “Border work, border Trouble: Postcolonial Feminism and the Ayah
in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India”, Modern Fictional Studies, 46.2 (Summer 2000):
380.
2. One can, for instance, find in Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story “When Mr. Pirzada Came
to Dine” how the young girl character Lilia deeply involved in looking at maps to
have some idea of the places her father was speaking of. (23-42,New Delhi: Harper
Collins Publishers India, 2000). One similarly finds how Bartholomew’s atlas
occupies an important role in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines.(231, Delhi:
OUP,1988).
3. Hai, Modern Fictional Studies. 46.2(Summer 2000): 380.
4. Homi Bhabha, ed., “Front/ Lines/Border/Posts”, Special Issue of Critical Enquiry.
23.4(1997): 9.
5. Bhabha, 9.
6. Hai, Modern Fictional Studies. 46.2(Summer 2000): 381.
7. Mary Poovey, “Feminism and Deconstruction”. Feminist Studies, 14.1 (1988): 51-65.
8. James Clifford, “The Transit Lounge of Culture”. Times Literary Supplement, 4596 (3
May 1992): 7.
9. Amitav Ghosh, ‘The Slave Of Ms. 6’. Subaltern Studies, VII, Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1992.175-6.
10. Amitav Ghosh, The Shadow Lines. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988.
11. A.N. Kaul, ‘A Reading of The Shadow Lines.’ Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines,
Delhi: Oxford University Press,1988.300.
1. 12. Rama Kundu, “Like Stepping Into A Mirror” ed. Novy Kapadia Amitav Ghosh’s The
Shadow Lines. New Delhi: Asia Book Club,2001.
2. 13. Anjali Gera, “‘Desh Kothai?’ Amitav Ghosh Tells Old Wives Tales”, ed., Tabish
Khair, ‘Amitav Ghosh: A Critical Companion’, Delhi: Permanent Black,2003.109.
3. 14. A.N. Kaul, ‘A Reading of Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines, Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1988.305.
4. 15. Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-91. London:
Granta, 1991.26.
5. 16. Novy Kapadia, ‘Imagination and Politics in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines, ed.,
Vinay Kirpal, ‘The New Indian Novel in English: A Study of the 1980’s’. New Delhi:
Allied, 1996.205.
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6. 17. Jon Mee, “ ‘The Burthen of Mystery’: Imagination and difference in The Shadow
Lines” ed., Tabish khair, ‘Amitav Ghosh: A Critical Companion’. Delhi: Permanent
Black,2003,. Mee points out that “it is not clear whether she (the grandmother) is going
or coming home when she sets off for Dhaka… The novel reveals that the identities for
which people have spilled their blood are shifting, affected by aspirations of the people
themselves and that boundaries are capable of being redrawn.” 95.
7. 18. John Hutchinson and Paul R. Brass, “Elite Competition and Nation-Formation,”
Nationalism, ed., John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith. Oxford: Oxford University
Press,1994. 4.
8. 19. Rashmi Varma, ‘Freedom and the Image of Looking Glass in The Shadow Lines, ed.,
Indira Bhatt and Indira Nityanandam, ‘Interpretations: Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow
Lines’. Delhi: Creative Books,2000.
9. 20. Novy Kapadia, ‘Introduction’, ed., Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines : Critical
Perspectives. Delhi: Asia Book Club,2001.48.
10. 21. Rama Kundu, ‘Like Stepping Into the Mirror: The Shadow Lines’,ed., Novy Kapadia,
Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines : Critical Perspectives. Delhi: Asia Book
Club,2001.174.
11. 22. Arvind Chowdhary,”Time and Space in The Shadow Lines”,ed., Arvind Chowdhary,
Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines: Critical Essays. New Delhi: Atlantic
Publishers,2002.101.
12. 23. Meenakshi Mukherjee, ‘Maps and Mirrors’ in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines,
Delhi: Oxford University Press,1998.261.
13. 24. Kavita Daiya, “No Home. But in Memory: Migrant Bodies and Belongings,
Globalisation and Nationalism in The Circle of Reason and The Shadow Lines”, ed.,
Brinda Bose, Amitav Ghosh: Critical Perspectives. New Delhi: Pencraft
International,2003.51.
Web Reference:
http://www.ijelr.in/2.3.15/486-488%20SUBHAM%20GANGULY.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232829300_Mother-Weights_and_Lost_Fathers
http://muse.jhu.edu/article/21483

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