Voicing the Subaltern in Amitav Ghosh’s Novel The Hungry Tide

Abstract

Abstract

Subaltern is a term used in the Postcolonial theory to represent the oppressed or the marginalised sections of the society.It is used in the fields of history, anthropology, sociology, human geography, and literary criticism. Postcolonial writers have been trying to bring in enlightenment to the oppressed, marginalized or the so called subalterns, through their writings. Many contemporary writers have been trying to voice the subalterns and Amitav Ghosh is one among them. Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Hungry Tide is about tides and tigers; difficulties and dangers; dreams and deaths; struggle and social service; ecology and cetology; myth and culture; public history and private history; power politics and subalterns.This paper is an attempt to study how Amitav Ghosh reconstructs private history of a helpless woman,Kusum around the public history of Morichjhapiincident. The aim of the paper is to analyse how Amitav Ghosh has voiced the sufferings of Kusum and other subalterns.