Borders, Violence, and Political Unrest, Relationship In Shadow Lines, BA English Honours, MA ENGLISH

 

Borders, Violence, and Political Unrest

 

The events of The Shadow Lines center primarily around riots that took place in Calcutta, India, and Dhaka, East Pakistan, in late 1963 and early 1964. Though the narrator doesn't discover the truth until the very end of the novel, it's this riot in Dhaka that kills Tridib, a realization that suddenly forces the narrator to reevaluate his experience of the conflict from his hometown in Calcutta and consider the ways in which the riots were an even bigger defining moment in his life than he realized at the time. As the narrator, in his late twenties or thirties, finally pieces together what happened, he begins to consider the role that British colonialism and the border between India and East Pakistan played in the conflict, and how the political unrest of the period truly impacted his understanding of his family and the world.

 

The novel questions the efficacy of borders. The family of Dutta Choudarys and Prices in London defy the borders between them and there is a continuous to and fro movement between the two. They have good relations despite the racial and cultural differences. Ila gets married to Roby and May falls in love with Tridib. Had the tragedy not struck, then the two might have tied the nuptial knot. It, therefore, demonstrates that there is not much difference between the people across the globe. The humanity is same everywhere. It would not be too bold to say that Ghosh has gone a little too far to bring the people together. When the British finally granted their colony of British India independence in 1947, they divided the colony along religious lines, creating the Hindu-majority country of India and the Muslim-majority countries of East Pakistan and West Pakistan. As the narrator, who grew up in the Indian city of Calcutta, describes, these borders meant that he was relatively unaware of anything happening outside his home in India—cities that were a thousand miles away but still in India were in the forefront of his consciousness and understanding, while cities that were a day's drive away, but in another country, simply didn't exist in his mind.

Freedom and Identity

 

The novel has an unnamed narrator relating the story of his experience, or to be precise, his uncle Tridib’s experience most of the times. Tridib was the narrator’s guiding spirit and mentor, who taught him how to use his imagination with precision who gave him worlds to travel in and eyes to see them with. Read More Novel The action of the novel has as its starting point the narrator’s memories of Tridib (then 8 years old) being taken to London during wartime and his experiences there with the Price family. Through the narrator’s grandmother and memories of her girlhood days in Dhaka, and her later return to the city in search of an old relative, the narrator is made aware of the tragic and violent consequences of the partition. Essentially the narrative ends with the incident, ghastly and tragic, of Tridib’s death in Dhaka riot.  

 

The Relationship in the Storyline:

 

The Shadow Lines centers on the relationship between freedom and how people try to achieve that freedom. In this way, the novel seeks to parse out the meanings of different kinds of freedom and how one's perception of freedom influences their identity. Further, the novel also suggests that the idea of freedom is enough to drive someone mad, even if freedom is ultimately unreachable.

 

The undivided India had long been living in peace and harmony and though people followed different religions, they stayed in mutual cooperation. It was towards the beginning of 20th century that the seeds of dissension were sown by some people in connivance with and on provocation of the ruling masters and the matters came to such a pass where the partition was the only choice. M.A. Jinna’s obstinate stand for a different nation for the Muslim population was not only myopic but also hazardous. Even after partition, the people lived peacefully except those led by the rumour mills of their brothers being attacked and killed in the other parts. The most to suffer were typical plodding countrymen who did not even know who M.A. Jinna or J.L. Nehru was or what was India being partitioned for. The old uncle to Tha’mma gives entry to a Muslim family, which stays with him and looks after him. Khali, the rickshaw driver is more concerned for him than his own family; and both the innocents are killed in the riots. The old folks stay where their roots are. They have an unqualified love and a deep sense of belonging for the place where they have been born. Tha’mma wants to get back to her native place in Dhaka and her uncle does not want to come to India. Both of them do not believe in the borders. Riots and other things of such nature are very transient in nature and get sucked up in the history and fade away from public memory before long.

 

The novel explores the idea of freedom primarily through the opposing definitions held by Tha'mma, the narrator's grandmother, and Ila, his cousin. Tha'mma, who was born in 1902, grew up during the British occupation of India. As a young woman, Tha'mma believed that there was nothing more important than securing freedom from British rule, even telling her wide-eyed grandson that she wanted to join the terrorists and assassinate British government officials to meet those ends. Despite being so intent on this freedom as a young woman, when Partition (the process that granted the colony of British India freedom from colonial rule by creating the separate countries of India, West Pakistan, and East Pakistan, which later became Bangladesh) finally took place in 1947, Tha'mma was far too busy working and raising a family as a widow to even celebrate, let alone consider the gravity of what happened. It's not until much later that 62-year-old Tha'mma, as she prepares to return to Dhaka for the first time since she was a young woman, realizes the implications of the colony's divisions. While she identifies proudly as an Indian and Hindu woman, the fact that she was born in Dhaka means that, in light of current borders, she was born in East Pakistan—a Muslim-majority country. This realization shakes her sense of identity to its very core, especially in light of her growing nationalism in her old age. This nationalism, which reaches its height after Tridib dies on this trip to Dhaka, leads Tha'mma to sell her beloved gold chain to fund the Indian fight against Muslims. When the narrator confronts her about it, she screams at him that she did it to ensure his freedom from "them" (presumably, the Muslim East Pakistanis). This suggests that Tha'mma's desire for freedom and an easy identity very literally drives her mad, and this nationalism only increases in the following years until her death.

 

The novel begins with the eight-year-old narrator talking of his experiences as a schoolboy living in the Gole-Park neighbourhood in Calcutta. He introduces the reader to the two branches of his family tree- the families of his Grandmother Tha’mma and that of the Grandmother’s sister, Mayadebi. According to the acclaimed critic Meenakshi Mukherjee this rendition in the novel amongst other details helps the reader feel the ‘concreteness of the existential and emotional milieu…the precise class location of his family, Bengali bhadralok, starting at the lower edge of the spectrum and ascending to its higher reaches in one generation, with family connections above and below its own
station…’ The grandmother is a schoolteacher and the father is a middle rung manager in a tyre company. 

As far as Tha'mma is concerned, Ila's desire for and definition of freedom is a direct attack on her own beliefs about freedom. This is primarily because Ila seeks her freedom by escaping to England, where she can live as a modern western woman: she can sleep with or flirt with men if she feels like it, she can travel around the world, and most importantly, she's no longer under the control of her male relatives in India. However, the novel questions if the "freedom" Ila finds by living in England is even real when it describes the man she marries, Nick Price. Though Ila's marriage to Nick is supposed to free her from obligations to her family and give her a platform of support, Nick admits mere months into their marriage that he has several other girlfriends and no interest in giving them up. When Ila refuses to leave her marriage because she loves Nick too much, she chooses to exist in a place where her freedom is compromised. The narrator interprets this as an indication that in some ways, Tha'mma was right: Ila can't be free. This is reinforced in a point that comes later in the novel but earlier chronologically, when the narrator tells his dying grandmother that Ila lives in England so that she can be free. Tha'mma calls Ila a whore and insists that Ila is in no way free—as per Tha'mma's understanding, freedom can't be purchased in the form of a plane ticket, especially since her own first and only plane ride to Dhaka resulted not only in an identity crisis, but the loss of family.

As the narrator speaks to others about the meaning of freedom, from his uncle Robi to May, he comes to understand though everyone desperately loves the idea freedom and wants it for themselves, actually achieving true freedom is nearly impossible. Robi believes he'll never be free of the traumatic memories of Tridib's death, which he witnessed firsthand; Ila chooses to never free herself from her unhappy marriage that was supposed to free her; and the narrator asserts that the Indian subcontinent will never truly be free from the spite and animosity caused by British rule, long after Partition. With this, the novel suggests that freedom is an impossible idea, and no one can ever be truly free, no matter how hard one might fight for it or attempt to escape oppression.

 Disclaimer: Images have been taken from the Goolgle sites.