An Exploration of Subalterns in Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies

Abstract

This article highlights the subalterns’ plights, sufferings, agonies and racial prejudice in Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies. This novel deals with the sheer helplessness of the Indian farmers and labourers as the unquenchable hunger of the British for profits that made them desolated, annihilated and unprotected. Deeti hailed as the wife of a high caste man once but later became the victim and regarded as subaltern by means of marrying Kalua, the dalit. Once the King Neel and his family hailed as the pivotal of power and later the cruel society shifted them as subalterns on the ship. In this novel Ghosh attempts to heave the subaltern people and marginalised people from the centrifugal stage to centripetal stage.