Diaspora in Indian Literature: A Critical Study of Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines

Abstract

In the burgeoning field of South Asian Diasporic Writing, Indian Diasporic Writing has the major or maximum contribution. Among others, Amitav Ghosh is a prominent and influential Indian writer who has enriched the genre of Indian Diasporic Writing. Having first-hand experience of migration or movement, he has personally experienced the effects that follow the aftermath of migration. Accordingly, he tries to infuse his personal migratory experiences into his works and produces literary texts that are replete with themes integral to a diasporic text. Homelessness, belongingness, cross-cultural and socio-economic conflicts, nostalgia, dislocation, rootlessness are the primary themes or key elements of his works. Being a writer interested in writing about diasporic or migratory experiences, his works engage in looking on diversity of cultures, languages, people, histories and different places. The proposed paper or study intends to work on tracing out the diasporic elements or diasporic sensibility/consciousness in Ghosh’s novel, The Shadow Lines. The primary focus of the paper lies on exploring the intricacies of migration or displacement and thus highlighting the instability of an immigrant in an alien or a foreign land. The broader theoretical framework for the study shall be provided by the Diaspora studies.