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.

          

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Amrita Tripathi: Who are some of your favourite writers that you enjoy reading right now?

Amitav Ghosh: I have so many favourite writers, it’s really hard to make a small list but I think a better way to put that question is 'Who have you read recently?' I don’t know if you know the work of Amitabh Bagchi, I read his book I really liked it. I think this wonderful genre of the IIT novel in India is just terrific. I really enjoyed Chetan Bhagat’s first book. There is a young woman writer called Anjum Hassan who wrote a wonderful book about Shillong really liked it. And then more recently I’ve read Mukul Keshavan’s new book of essays and I think it’s just a marvellous collection, absolutely outstanding. I’ve always loved to read essays and I would put this right up there with the very finest essays.

Amrita Tripathi: I also want to ask you little bit about imperialism and this as a theme in your writing. Do you think it is actually a theme that comes across, you know colonialism and attitudes towards it.

Amitav Ghosh: If you are writing about 19th century India, imperialism is pretty inescapable. I mean it was there it was shaping the country I mean there is no way you can write about it without dealing in some way with that subject so I think I would say that easily is the nature of my interest.

Amrita Tripathi: I was reading this article you had written right after 9/11 about the occupation in Iraq and you are comparing it to the 1857 uprising in various ways. Do you think these are things that maybe historians and writers need to be addressing just to bring it out in the public as well.

Amitav Ghosh: Yes, absolutely and I must say hats off to Arundhati, she’s addressed them very powerfully and she intervened at a time when it was urgently necessary not that it made any difference but you know the age of imperialism isn’t over. It’s actually now starting all over again, it’s really starting in earnest. Just yesterday we saw the American army attacking the Pakistani army on the borders of Pakistan. I mean I think re-colonisation is a very real prospect for Pakistan you know. The age of imperialism is not only not over it’s knocking on our doors again. During this whole Iraq war, during this whole period of George W Bush’s presidency we suddenly saw imperial historians standing out there, literally saying we want empire back and I think it is important for us people who have our histories, people who have lived through our histories to stand up and say no, this is what your history actually did, what you’re thinking about your history is a myth. The reality is slavery, opium.

Amrita Tripathi: Then it is even more incumbent on say historians, people in the public sphere to voice these opinions?

Amitav Ghosh: It’s not to me to tell other people what they should do or not do but I certainly felt that these are issues that I had to address.

Amrita Tripathi: And even like you’re saying you know, for example it may not really make a difference, is it making a difference even by provoking debate,do you think it’s enough of a contribution.

Amitav Ghosh:No it’s a very unfortunate thing but we Indians today as writers as intellectuals we do have a very large presence in the world but in this debate we were able to do nothing at all, we were completely unaffected.

Amrita Tripathi: We leave it at that but I want to ask you one last thing about your website, do u update it yourself?

Amitav Ghosh: Yes, I have someone working on it and I answer the messages myself.

Amrita Tripathi: Just the blog is missing. So Are you planning to blog?

Amitav Ghosh: You know I thought about doing a blog and then I thought of constantly having to update it and then I thought I’ll be thinking about this all day long so I thought no.