Rewriting the Subaltern in Amitav Ghosh's The Calcutta Chromosome

Abstract

The present thesis entitled "Rewriting the Subaltern in Amitav Ghosh's The Calcutta Chromosome" covers the issues of resistance against the British Imperial power and its cultural hegemony. Ghosh depicts this resistance through subaltern characters like Murugan, Mangala and Laakhan against British scientist Ronald Ross and his colleagues. Ross, while making scientific research in India about the malaria parasite during the colonial period is supported and assisted by Mangala, Laakhan and their followers. But the colonial scientific community denies the role played by Mangala and her associates. It subsides their actions and deeds for in the elite colonial historiography, the Indians are ignored and marginalized. While resisting the western monopoly over scientific discoveries and inventions, Ghosh through Murugan traces the agency of a mysterious group of subalterns, owing allegiance to Mangala, Laakhan and their tradition of counter science. Amitav Ghosh, in The Calcultta Chromosome, subverts the hegemonic elitist discourse of the colonial historiography by making his character Murugan investigate into the late-ninteenth century malaria parasite research in India. Murugan, in his investigation, reveals the sensational fact that Ronald Ross, the accredited scientist, was brought into the right direction by an Indian woman, Mangala -- a high priestess of a secret medical cult. By deconstructing the colonial historiography Ghosh constructs the alternative subaltern history in which the subaltern might, can and does speak.