Amitav Ghosh And The Environmental Crisis: Examining Nature In The Hungry Tide

Abstract

Amid the environmental crisis that looms ever larger over the planet, the place of literature in shaping our sense of human connections to the non-human world acquires monumental importance. The relationships between human actions and environmental well-being have never been clearer, as climate change, biodiversity loss and habitat destruction escalate on a global level. From every angle, literature is a potent mirror of these multiple crises, forcing readers to think critically about their complicity in and ability to counteract environmental degradation.

Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide is a weighty examination of these issues, delivered through a colourful story of the Sundarbans, an endangered, deltaic ecosystem in the Bay of Bengal. The novel moves between the intersecting lives of Piya, a marine biologist, and other characters whose stories emphasize the thin line between human survival and the health of the natural world. The Sundarbans is uncannily used by Ghosh to depict how fragile ecology can be and how disastrous ignorance related to it can become, at the same time lending emphasis to marginalized people who live on the land, and depend on its resources.

This article contributes to ecocritical readings of The Hungry Tide by considering the ways in which Ghosh deals with the environmental crisis in this novel by presenting the Sundarbans as a literal as well as metaphoric figure of eco-susceptibility. Ghosh, in an exploration of social and political dimensions of deforestation, condemns the use of nature, in particular that of indigenous peoples for whom this process involves a territory displacement. In this unpredictable tale that speaks to environmental and moral urgencies, Ghosh seeks to confront the horror of the past and their implications through the novel's unique form, urging contemporary and future generations to reconsider their views on diminishing natural resources and catastrophic climate policies.