Echoes Of Violence: Intergenerational Trauma and The Memory of Partition in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines

Abstract

This paper analyses the strong presence of intergenerational trauma and the memory of Partition in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines, a novel in which the aftershocks of communal violence and national division across time, space, and generations have been evaluated. Drawing upon the theories of trauma, memory studies, and postcolonial criticism, this study investigates the effects of the traumatic legacies of Partition and communal riots on the characters who were neither direct participants nor witnesses to these riots, but who inherit the psychological and emotional results of violence. The novel’s narrative strategies—its use of fragmentation, memory loops, and multiple temporalities have been analyzed to demonstrate how trauma is transmitted, internalized, and re-imagined within familial and cultural contexts through a qualitative and thematic close reading of the text. The paper argues that Ghosh challenges conventional historical accounts by emphasizing personal and fragmented recollections over national memory, thus engaging in a counter-historiographical project that foregrounds private suffering and cultural silence. Ultimately, The Shadow Lines serves as a compelling literary work in which generational boundaries are blurred by the echoes of violence, revealing how trauma becomes part of the collective psyche and shapes identity, belonging, and historical consciousness of future generation.