Abstract

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The Imam and the Indian shows different kinds of countries cultures, events, people, riots, and connections between past and present memories that have shared history. The site of violence that sheds communal riots, bloodies and a common historical memory displaces whole populations in the article The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi. Yet, it suggests that communal violence can also make visible the connections between and the continuity of social relations and communities that nation seeks to efface. Violence here becomes both sign and testimony of the shared identity of events, memories and communities. It also reveals the frontiers policed by nation states that separate people, communities and also families. He suggests that the nature of boundaries can be understood through the metaphor of the looking glass. The national borders between the people of India and China, Egypt and Tibet share the similar history. Thus, In Ghosh's non-fiction, articles, essays, and short stories the fundamental identity of people, cultures and countries is constructed.
However, I tried to interpret the experiences of Ghosh through this follow period that separated Ghosh's non-fictional novel, The Imamand the Indian signaled the gestation of another project - Ghosh's third book, In an Antique Land that Ghosh was not to embark on until 1989. Outside the world of fiction, as I have seen in this book, Amitav Ghosh is heavily engaged in the political and cultural wars that shape a post-colonial and globalized world. One cannot pretend that The Imam andthe Indian is a unified work, since it consists of essays, articles and short stories written over a couple of decades.