Subaltern voices: a major issue in the works of amitav ghosh

Subaltern history acquired fame not as a mode of writing history but as another form of postcolonial criticism. During the last fifty years various works of subaltern histories and cultures have been published providing several fragments of methods, theory and concept of subaltern. Having gained wider connotation with time, it is now used for the oppressed, the exploited and the discriminated who are subject to dominance on the basis of race, gender, caste, color, rank, region, or in any other form: "The term subaltern is used to denote the entire people that is subordinate in terms of class, caste, age, gender and office, or in any other way" (Sen 203). Gramsci adopted the term subaltern to refer to those groups in society including those of peasants and workers who are governed by the hegemony of the ruling classes. He calls the subaltern class the emergent class consisting of the much greater mass of people who are deprived of "hegemonic" power. Amitav Ghosh is one of the most distinguished Indian novelists of the Rushdiean tradition who have contributed significantly to Indian English fiction. As a subaltern novelist he endeavors to reveal historical, political and cultural realities as well as the oppression, discrimination and exploitation of the common people that have been suppressed or hidden by Western history. Ghosh explores the paradigm of human relationship constructed across the transient divisions of territory, religion and social class, and around this relationship, which is marked by antagonism as well as harmony; he weaves an interesting tale of history, colonialism, folklore, ecology, migration, love and grief. As a subaltern historiographer Ghosh focuses on the cultures, religions, customs, social life-styles, experiences and thoughts of the ordinary people and for the construction of their oral histories, memory serves as a major source. These voices evoke conflicts and contradictions in the subalterns' historical relationship with the elite characterized by the power interplay of dominance and subordination.