Reading between the lines with Amitav Ghosh

WRITER'S SPACE: Ghosh has been winning awards since his first book The Circle of Reason was published in 1986.

          

J & K | Chhattisgarh | Delhi | MP |
Mizoram | Rajasthan

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Amrita Tripathi: A lot of research has gone into this book, as there is nautical jargon being used on the ship and also Bhojpuri, so how did all the research come together?

Amitav Ghosh: Well, there was a different kinds of research involved in the book, there was research carried out in the library which was very interesting because when I was in Mauritius where they have a very beautiful archive called the Mahatma Gandhi Institute where they preserve all the papers and things that went with the earliest migrants, so it's very moving to see all the care and love that has gone into the preservation of those papers, and history and those documents. However on our side we preserve nothing of the people that left, the old migrant depot has gone, there is no commemoration of the places from where they embarked in old Calcutta which I think is such a pity because if they commemorate these places so many people would come to visit it. For the Diaspora of all the people who are in Mauritius or wherever, the idea of being from Calcutta is a very powerful idea, because they all left from Calcutta. If you think of what it meant for these people who were poor peasants from the Bhojpur region, what it meant for them to go on a ship and cross the paani (waters) to go to a place they know nothing about. It was a very brave act as these people were extremely courageous people. So that was one very interesting part of the research, than there was a research into ships and especially into sailing ships. And one of the most interesting parts was just learning how to sail.

Amrita Tripathi: So you learnt to sail, that must have been interesting?

Amitav Ghosh: Yes, it was a lot of fun and very exciting.

Amrita Tripathi: Are you going to get yourself a boat, a ship, a yacht anything of that sort or is it just going to be a hobby?

Amitav Ghosh: I enjoyed myself so much that if I could, I certainly would.

Amrita Tripathi: And is it opium that we are talking about because of the East India Company?

Amitav Ghosh:That is something that I've come upon by accident and which has really surprised me because yes, it is the case from 1780s onwards under the East India Company there was a huge increase in poppy planting and opium production in India. It was really the principles of the trade mechanism and a lot of wealth was drained out of India. That entire history is something that we in India have really forgotten, that we in India pay no attention to, but opium was the mainstay of the British economy in India. It was opium that financed the British Raj essentially.

Amrita Tripathi: So would you say it's another form of exploitation that we have not registered and processed or is it a willful ignorance on the part of Indian historians may be?

Amitav Ghosh: I think there is some degree of shame in it, as the very word opium makes people uneasy doesn't it? And yet to this day we are the largest producers of legitimate opium in the world. In the same Ghazipur factory, I mean naturally some place has to produce legitimate opium, as it's a medicine, so we still continue to do that. But I would say we have basically chosen to forget this aspect of our past.