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Literary Herald ISSN: 2454-3365 an International Refereed/Peer-Reviewed English E-Journal Impact Factor: 4.727 (SJIF) www.TLHjournal.com Literary Herald ISSN: 2454-3365 An International Refereed/Peer-reviewed English e-Journal Impact Factor: 4.727 (SJIF) Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy: A Study of History and Culture Sanjeev Khanna Associate Professor Madhav institute of Technology & Science Gwalior Abstract: Amitav Ghosh as a fictionist presents a truthful (history) account (fiction) of the people [largely destitute] who for some or the other reason have been uprooted from their own roots/culture. The most noteworthy factor about Sea of Poppies is the setting of the novel in the British Indian background. Sea of poppies is the first of the trilogy on the opium farming and its aftermath. John C. Hawley in his book on Amitav Ghosh remarks: Amitav Ghosh‘s novels brim with interesting themes set against fascinating historical backdrops. His roots are in ... the Dickensian proliferation of characters whose lives engage us and who take us to some richly imagined places and times. (Hawley, 1) Ghosh evokes a picture of India of 1830s with its rituals, customs, society, hardships, British misrule, and a horde of men and women indecisive of what is going to be their future and where they are heading for. Amitav Ghosh‘s novels have a historical setting where the writer in a magical realistic mode portrays the continuing cultural confluence in India under the British rule. Being a trained anthropologist Ghosh studies the tides society and culture undergoes in its paths of progress. John Thieme is on a firmer ground to assert that Ghosh blurs ―the boundaries between anthropology and fiction.‖ (Thieme, 178-79) Keywords: Culture, History, Realism, Magic Realism, Anthropology. Sea of Poppies Sea of Poppies employs diverse tongues and a memorable cast of characters that find their semblances in history. The sea of the title is symbolic of a man-made disaster where the East India Company is forcing the farmers of the Gangetic plains for the cultivation of opium. Which, when ready has to be smuggled into china in a times where might settled the question of legalities and moralities of trade and trade-relations. This forceful trading is in disguise of not merely the British balance of payments but also to turn the tables bearing financial dealings so as to ensure the return of money seemingly to England and secretly to Europe without the possibilities of the least investment by the Europeans in the East. This was the Objective of the setting up of the East India Company. (Robbins, 7) The story glosses over a time when India was the world's biggest opium producer. Two centuries ago British turned the banks of the Ganges into a sea of poppies and forcibly marketing the refined drug in China in a great political and military desperation to establish their control/hegemony over China in which they succeeded financially and not militarily as they did in India. Things worsened as the Chinese emperor banned the drug that dulled his subjects and addled his empire. British openly defied the orders and retorted to the use of force forcing the emperor and even more shamefully propelled London—which then sought pride in the events—to wage the opium wars. At Vol. 6, Issue 1 (June 2020) Dr. Siddhartha Sharma Page 50 Editor-in-Chief www.TLHjournal.com Literary Herald ISSN: 2454-3365 An International Refereed/Peer-reviewed English e-Journal Impact Factor: 4.727 (SJIF) one instance the Opium was poisoning the Chinese at the other it was also doing the same to the Indian counterparts. While Chinese were being poisoned by the use of opium in the mid-19th century, the poor Indian peasant actually suffered the brunt of this poisoning. The English ‘sahibs’ forced farmers to grow poppy instead of useful crops like wheat, cereals, vegetable etc. Amitav Ghosh aptly captures the sheer helplessness of Indian labourers and peasants as the factory‘s growing appetite for revenue and influence exploited the defenceless farmers. Sea of Poppies traverses the least treaded path of Indian colonial history by exposing the shrewd business acumen of British, who scrapped India of its riches and Chinese of their discretion by poisoning [both of] them with opium. Painted against this background is a poignant picture of the human devastation. The fertile farms of the Ganges plain are blooming with poppies—beautiful and deadly, denying peasants the crops to sustain them and thus indebting them to moneylenders and landowners, who themselves are indebted to the British. Skilfully Ghosh assembles those who will set sail in his narrative of the Ibis, an old slaving ship that is taking indentured labourers to Mauritius. It accounts for the story how on board the ship Ibis—headed to Caribbean sugar plantations—small new worlds are forged, bringing together north Indian women, Bengali Zamindars, black men, rural labourers and Chinese seamen. It is the story of people whose fate is written in poppy flowers. (Bhushan, 135) British forced opium cultivation ruining lives of farmers. Not merely the peasants but the commoners as well were addicted having been forced to live on the drug and thus indirectly surrendering to a political conspiracy lead by a nation in the guise of trade. A large cast of characters in Sea of Poppies assembles in Calcutta, teeming city in which numerous races and people of differing faiths and creeds live together. The Ibis, a former slave ship, is being refitted to take a large group of girmitiyas or indentured migrants to Mauritius (Islands of Mareech): They were so called because, in exchange for money, their names were entered on ‗girmits‘—agreements written on piece of paper. The silver that was paid for them went to their families, and they were taken away, never to be seen again: they vanished, as if into the netherworld. (Sea, 72) If Rushdie can be said to have revitalized the Indian novel in English with the 1981 publication of Midnight’s Children, Amitav Ghosh‗s fiction has over the years, probed its unlit corners, and brought it into powerful dialogue with other places, people and times. R. K. Dhawan concludes that ―Ghosh is perhaps the finest writer among those who were born out of the post- Midnight’s Children revolution in Indian English Fiction.‖ (Dhawan: 11) Ghosh has chosen to set new literary challenges for himself, constantly transforming his work over the years. Amit Chaudhuri sees Ghosh's The Circle of Reason and The Shadow Lines as ―a response to his readings of [García] Márquez and Rushdie.‖ (Chaudhuri: 538) Brinda Bose pertinently remarking over the political, social, and cultural nuances of Ghosh‘s subject says it is this ―sensibility that sets him apart from the clutch of Indian novelists in English that are springing from the woodwork ever since Rushdie immortalised the genre.‖ (Bose, 18-19) Ghosh continues building his oeuvre with Sea of Poppies, a tale of mass migration and displacement of Indians with the rise of British power. Set in 1830s, this is the story of the people on the Ibis, a ship that will sail from the Bay of Bengal to Mauritius. Originally a slave ship, the Ibis has undergone a bit of a transformation after the abolition of slavery. When the story begins, a refurbished Ibis—minus the earlier shackles and chains—is ready to transport indentured labour to British colonies, its cargo men and women from agrarian Eastern India and Bengal who will sail to Mauritius to work as labour on plantations. Called girmitiyas (a corrupted derivative of the English ―agreement‖ that they have signed to work as labour), these people will by sailing the Black Waters Vol. 6, Issue 1 (June 2020) Dr. Siddhartha Sharma Page 51 Editor-in-Chief www.TLHjournal.com Literary Herald ISSN: 2454-3365 An International Refereed/Peer-reviewed English e-Journal Impact Factor: 4.727 (SJIF) (Kaala Pani) loosing not just their hearth and home forever, but also what is most precious to the Hindus is their caste, which they are going to shed by sailing across Waters. (Sea, 1: 356) This is India in the 19th century—the East India Company‘s hold on Bengal is complete, and the eastern provinces beyond Bengal having been under the purview of the Company Bahadur‘s rule. This rule spells havoc for villages and towns treading upon the policies that enforce opium cultivation destroying indigenous agriculture and trade. A testimony to this is the motley crowd on the ship, all products of the disaster brought by opium. There are four lots of characters in the Sea of Poppies. They come from different cultures having one undeniable commonality between them—they are all victim of exploitation. First, is the young mother Deeti married to a hopeless opium addict, drugged and violated on her wedding night by his brother, bullied into the ritual practice of suttee, and rescued from the flames of self-immolation by the loyal, massive Kalua, whose cross-caste elopement starts a manhunt along the length of the Ganges. Having lost her husband and her fields to opium, she is now on the ship to escape her fate. Forced to cultivate opium as a part of the Company‘s colonial policy, Deeti and other rural folk have abandoned centuries-old agricultural traditions. Their land yields no grains or fruit, and they have no control over their opium produce either, as it is procured by factories at arbitrary prices. One of the accomplishments of this Deeti‘s character and indeed a major highlight of this book is Amitav Ghosh‘s detailed description of the Ghazipur Opium factory through Deeti's eyes, based on an account by one J.W.S. McArthur, a superintendent of the Ghazipur Opium factory in the 19th century.
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