Sea of Poppies

Fundamental to the philosophy of Burnham and others is the concept of free trade, and this concept and its effects are explored throughout the book. For Burnham, free trade is a fundamental right. It’s less clear why he believes it to be a fundamental right rather than a philosophy. One answer might be that free trade represents personal liberty for him, which dovetails nicely with his individualist Christian philosophy. A more cynical answer might be that it happens to work very well for him, so he philosophizes his way into a justification for it, putting the cart before the horse. Chillingworth calls him and the others out on this precise tension at their dinner party, arguing that they imbue their philosophies with moral dimensions as justification for them, rather than simply admitting that their ideology is driven by self-interest.

Intertwined with this theme is that of personal liberty. Burnham has rather strange ideas about personal liberty, arguing at one point, for example, that abolishing the slave trade is abolishing freedom because it denies Africans the ability to be a part of civilization. This is a free trade absolutist argument taken to its natural end: if free trade has no checks, then trade can exist in any form, with any merchandise. Fundamentally, the personal liberty exhibited throughout the novel tends to be of the self-interested kind: the powerful argue for personal liberty insofar as it allows them to control others, and argue for personal responsibility only when it allows them to absolve themselves of personal responsibility. Then, of course, the theme is manifested in the core of the novel: the literal removal of personal liberty of certain groups and people, namely the practice of indentured servitude depicted in the book. 

A novel dealing with caste is certainly going to raise issues of class hierarchies; Sea of Poppies deals with this by making these discussions fluid and demonstrating how illusory the concepts can be as a result. The only form of class hierarchy that is rigidly retained throughout the novel is that of British supremacy, which is tied into a racial hierarchy, as well. Other than this, characters shift: Zachary inadvertently takes advantage of his light skin to pass as white, Deeti moves to a different caste when she marries Kalua, and Neel loses caste after his sentencing. But the novel also reinforces the ways these hierarchies are retained, even inadvertently. Neel, for example, thought of himself as following the traditions of his caste only because of those around him, but following his sentencing, he quickly discovers just how ingrained in him those teachings are—and also that his wife actually didn’t care. Jodu, too, discovers how rigid these distinctions are when he’s caught talking to Munia, which is forbidden due to their differing religious backgrounds. Likewise, though Deeti eventually marries Kalua, when we first see them interact with one another, Deeti is afraid even to pass an item directly to him and instead places it on the ground; Kalua, too, has his own low caste deeply ingrained in him. As a result, although many characters push back against these hierarchies, the novel demonstrates just how deeply systemic they are, and how difficult it can be to move past them. 

Sea of Poppies repeatedly questions the nature of the rule of law. Though it doesn’t explicitly state this, fundamental to understanding this is that the rule of law is considered to be a founding feature of civilized society, and one of the primary tensions of the novel is between two societies. The English believe themselves to be the bedrock of civilized society, along with other Western nations, and in part this is ostensibly because of the rule of law. However, as Ghosh shows, despite claims to impartiality and blind justice, in reality, the system is anything but fair, and in fact is used as a tool in order to reinforce power.

Neel’s practice of signing Benjamin Burnham’s name, for example, is indisputably against the law; however, it was also a common practice that dated back to his own father’s time. The rule of law here is used not to maintain order but to disrupt a specific kind of status quo in order to ensure that power is retained by whites in Calcutta—Neel does not accede to Burnham’s demands, so Burnham finds a way to use the rule of law against him. Similarly, Chillingworth, on the Ibis, suggests a fluidity in the concept of the rule of law—he acknowledges the importance of this, but then vests power only within himself; later, he relinquishes that power for political purposes so that Bhyro Singh can exact revenge on Kalua and, indirectly, Deeti. Further, Zachary and Serang Ali have a moment where Ali questions the difference between piracy and the drug/migrant trades; this is particularly prescient since the English are about to go to war in order to force China to allow the opium trade to continue, thereby disrespecting their own rule of law. Ghosh does not condemn the rule of law, and it would be a mistake to suggest that Ghosh here is claiming that anarchy is preferred. However, he is demonstrating that the rule of law is not as fair as we would like to believe, and certainly was not then.