Rewriting Colonial Archives: History and Fiction in Amitav Ghosh's Narrative Art

Amitav Ghosh’s narrative art is distinguished by a sustained engagement with colonial archives and their silences,distortions, and exclusions. His novels interrogate the authority of official historical records produced under colonial regimes and seekto recover marginalized voices erased from dominant historiography. By blending archival research with fictional imagination, Ghoshrewrites history from below, foregrounding the experiences of subaltern subjects such as migrants, indentured laborers, traders, sailors,and indigenous communities. This research article examines how Ghosh reconfigures colonial archives through fiction, focusing onnovels such as The Shadow Lines, In an Antique Land, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and the Ibis Trilogy (Sea of Poppies,River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire). Drawing on postcolonial historiography, New Historicism, and theories of archival power, thestudy argues that Ghosh’s fiction challenges the supposed objectivity of colonial records and offers alternative ways of rememberingthe past. His narrative practice transforms history into a dialogic space where official documents, oral histories, memory, andimagination coexist, thereby democratizing historical knowledge and questioning the epistemological foundations of colonialmodernity.