Marginalised Voices in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide
Keywords:
Ambiguous state of the nation, Marginalization, Exploitation, Ethical responsibilityAbstract
In The Hungry Tide, Amitav Ghosh focuses on the marginalization of people of the country who live in the borders and the plights of the refugees. It questions the importance of human habitation in Sunderbans and the government’s attitude of evicting the human settlements for the sake of protecting tigers in it. Ghosh subtly fabricates the story around the Morichjhapii massacre that happened in the 1970s. The marginalized people are treated as the other by the metropolitans negating the fact that the benefits are being prevented by them. Fokir, Moyna, and Kusum represent the marginalized others for whom, people from the metropolis such as Nilima, Kanai, and Piyali work for their upliftment. However, the elite sect shows their indifference towards the Bangladeshi refugees who got trapped in the hands of the West Bengal government. Ghosh recounts this double suppression of the refugees through Nirmal’s diary which imprints their sorry states.
References
Ghosh, Amitav. The Hungry Tide. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2004. Print.
Jain, Neena. “Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide: a Retrieval of Forgotten Historical Event of Migration and Refugees Resettlement in West Bengal”. The Atlantic Literary Review Quarterly. 12.3 (Jul-Sep 2011): 99-107. Print.
McLeod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism. New Delhi: Viva Books, 2011. Print.
Nayak. Bhaagabat. “Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide: A Postcolonial Approach”. Postcolonial Indian English Fiction: Critical Understating. Ed. Chandhra N.D.R. New Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers, 2010, 196-210. Print.
