Engagements Across the Indian Ocean:
Amitav Ghosh in Conversation
Chaired by Xolela Mangcu with discussants Achmat Dangor and Pamila Gupta
Date: 23 August 2007
Time: 5.30 for 6.00 pm
Venue: Origins Centre, University of the Witwatersrand
For more information contact Rita Kruger on Tel no. (011) 717 4245 or email rita.kruger@wits.ac.za
Framing the Conversation
Amitav Ghosh is a world writer in all senses of the word. Not only is he recognized as a prize-winning international figure in contemporary English literature, but his work illuminates planetary themes of globalisation and transnationalism.
The plots of his novels rove across the world: India, Egypt, Algeria, the Gulf States, Burma, Malaya and England. As this list indicates, Ghosh is a storyteller of the global south, interested in epic plots that illuminate non-western forms of globalisation.
In his first novel, Circle of Reason (1986)a young boy flees the fall-out as East Pakistan becomes Bengal making his way across the Indian Ocean to the Gulf States and then Algeria. The Glass Palace (2000) tells a family saga of Indians in Burma: it begins in 1885 as the invading British oust the Burmese royal family and follows the rise and fall of an Indian family in Burma who during World War II must flee the advancing Japanese and make an epic track back to India.
A novelist of the world rather than the nation, Ghosh is recognized as one of the early postcolonial critics of nationalism. The history of partitions in India (first in 1947 and then in 1971 with the formation of Bangladesh) provides a major fulcrum for his work. The Shadow Lines (1990) and The Circle of Reason (1990) examine characters mauled by these catastrophic upheavals.
Given his skepticism of the nation state, Ghosh favours themes of movement, exchange and diaspora and is a travel writer of note. In an Antique Land (1994), a compendium of history and anthropology focuses on the Indian Ocean as a long-standing arena of exchange. The book tells two stories: one focuses on Ghosh himself as he undertakes fieldwork in Egypt for an Oxford PhD; the other on a north African Jewish trader and his Indian slave. The second story highlights the ancient history of peaceful trade and intellectual commerce that spanned the Indian Ocean World. The first points to the difficulties of pursuing these goals in a world riven by the nation state.
Trained as an anthropologist, Ghosh deploys techniques of ethnography, fieldwork and historical research to inform his fiction. He sees little different between fiction and non-fiction using the techniques of one to bear upon the other.
His recent book The Hungry Tide (2004) engages with planetary themes of ecology and popular social movements. The novel unfolds in the sundarbans, the mangrove deltas formed where the Ganges enters the Bay of Bengal. At the heart of the story is one island,
Morichjhapi, the site of a forcible eviction of refugee settlers by the Left Front government of West Bengal in 1979. Around this event a range of characters lives intersect.
Ghosh has described himself as an Indian writer “reclaiming the world”. In realizing this goal, Ghosh provides readers in the global south with a unique perspective for doing the same.
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At a Glance
Amitav Ghosh is a leading international writer of fiction and travel writing.
Born in Calcutta in 1956, Ghosh now lives in New York. He spent a childhood on the move between Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Iran and India. After studying at St Stephens College, Delhi University, he undertook a D Phil at Oxford in Anthropology. He also studied in Egypt and Tunisia. He has taught at Columbia, CUNY, Harvard and other American Universities.
Ghosh has described himself as an Indian writer reclaiming the world. His novels are epic in scope and focus on the restless movement of families, ideas and objects across national boundaries, generally in the global south. His novels are The Circle of Reason (1986), The Shadow Lines (1990), The Calcutta Chromosome (1995) The Glass Palace (2000) and The Hungry Tide (2004).
His non-fiction works include In an Antique Land (1994) a compendium of history and anthropology which deals with the Indian Ocean World; Countdown (1999) (on India’s nuclear policy); The Imam and the Indian (2002) a collection of essays on different themes; and a compilation of travel pieces Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma (1998).
Amitav Ghosh has received numerous awards for his work from France, India, Germany and Italy.
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Why is his work important in South Africa?
Ghosh is a writer whose work speaks to transnational exchange in the global south. Why should this interest South Africans?
Since 2000, the shape of the world has shifted. India and China are rising world economic powers and are making their presence felt particularly in South Africa and the rest of the continent.
Consider these figures: trade between South Africa and India shot from R300 million in 1993 to R16.5 billion in 2006. By 2005, Chinese trade with Africa as a whole had reached $30 billion. South-South trade is expanding faster than any other trade flows in the world — at about 11 percent per year.
South Africa’s future will be massively shaped by these developments in the global south. Yet, are we intellectually prepared for this future?
Much intellectual and academic debate is still focused inward on parochial ideas of nationalism or has its eye firmly fixed on the north. We urgently need models that can help us understand our transnational future in the global south.
Amitav Ghosh is a writer centrally concerned with the intricate pasts and presents of the global south. His novels and non-fiction direct our attention to stories that concern nonwestern forms of transnationalism and globalization. One pertinent example is his focus, in his early work, on the Indian Ocean world, an ancient zone of far-reaching and peaceful transnational trade and exchange. His work weaves together much of the Indian Ocean rim taking in South East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Ghosh brings a multidisciplinary lens to bear on all of his work: anthropology, literature and history are present in his fiction and non-fiction which can hence speak to different audiences.
Ghosh grapples with the contradictions of the postcolonial state. Much of his work tells stories about those trapped in various kinds of post-independence violence be it communal carnage in India or the Left Front government of West Bengal forcibly removing refugees: the people’s government turning on the people.
As South Africa grapples with its own postcolonial complexities, Ghosh offers us a multidisciplinary vision rooted in the global south that can speak to our emerging realities.
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Selected Critical Resources
01. Website Links
