The Concept Of Humanism In Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines

Advancement in technological development has made life easier and relationship complicated. The essence of humanity ‘humanism’ is lost in the name of partition, nation and borders. Ghosh attempts a revival for humanism in his The Shadow Lines. The novel portrays the futility of war, riots, violence and partition and also re-searches the lost humanism that has been thrown into the recesses of modern busy life. This paper attempts to prove that the concept of borders and boundaries are illusions. These illusionary lines blur human sight and shrouds humanism in the name of nation and patriotism. It concludes that these illusions will disappear with the bloom of brotherhood and humanism irrespective of boundaries and borders.

Keywords: Humanism,
People have started to traverse borders for numerous reasons and this has resulted in the birth of a new community called Diaspora community. Usha Hemmadi in her article “Amitav Ghosh: A Most Distinctive Voice” opines, “Borders are meant to be crossed. Borders, then are an illusion, cruel most of the times”(290). Amitav Ghosh a diasporic writer lays his emphasis in establishing universal brotherhood in his novel The Shadow Lines. Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta on 11th of July 1956. He grew up in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), Sri Lanka, Iran, Egypt and India. After graduating from the University of Delhi, he went to Oxford to study Social Anthropology and received a Master of Philosophy and Ph. D. in 1982. He began his career as an editor in Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi. Meanwhile he has also been a Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. In 1999, he joined the faculty at Queens College, City University of New York as Distinguished Professor in Comparative Literature. He has also been a visiting professor to the English Department of Harvard University since 2005. He being an anthropologist has traversed borders to explore universal brotherhood despite the religious, cultural, traditional and linguistic differences. This paper aims to proclaim Ghosh’s concept of brotherhood beyond borders that could be attained by destroying the notion of nation and