A Study of Subaltern Representation in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide

Abstract

Society is a place where a person or groups strive to attain equilibrium in cultural, social, political, and economic aspects with a person or groups who possess the power to utilize it. Some people still lack behind in becoming the active part of the society. It may include immigrants, migrants, expatriate, refugees, marginal and subalterns.

Amitav Ghosh is a finest contemporary Indian English Writer whose novels deal with the most contemporary issues such as modern man’s perennial problems of existential crisis, problems of alienation, problems of restless, rootless and unsettled, problems of marginalization. His novel “The Hungry Tide”, published in 2004, narrates the story of miserable life of Bangladeshi refugees and the Morichjhapi massacre. In the novel, he has depicted the unfulfilled hopes and aspiration of the post war and post partition subaltern classes of the sub- continent. Set amongst the small, impoverished and isolated communities of the Sundarbans, the novel focuses on Multiracial and multiethnic issues. The Hungry Tide, as a whole, constantly reflects subalterns and subaltern relationships and this paper is an attempt to study the problems of rootless and unsettled, problems of marginalization in the subcontinent and the challenges faced by subalterns in Sundarban.