Book Review “The truth is, sir, that men do what their power permits them to do. We are no different from the Pharaohs or the Mongols: the difference is only that when we kill people we feel compelled to pretend that it is for some higher cause. It is this pretence of virtue, I promise you, that will never be forgiven by history.” Captain Chillingworth of the ship Ibis utters those words in Amitav Ghosh’s novel, Sea of Poppies . The novel is about power and how different people wield it over others as much as it is about the powerless who are destined to suffer the oppressions. The novel presents a part of the India in the 1830s. The British have become very powerful in India and they control the trade too. As Benjamin Burnham, one of the traders in the novel, says, trade indicates the “march of human freedom.” Even slave trade is part of that glorious march. According to Burnham, the white man gave freedom to the African ...
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