Nature from a Critical Lens: A Look at Amitav Ghosh's Worldview

"It is by worrying about adversity that people survive; complacency brings catastrophe."- Amitav Ghosh

Be it the free-flowing Saryu River of the imaginative universe of Malgudi or the enchanting natural landscape of the village Kanthapura, nature has always been a dominant mode of expression in literature that manifests itself in multifarious forms. While R.K Narayan narrates the adventure of Swami by exploring the complexity of the natural surrounding which adds a sheer meaning to the existence of his characters, Anita Desai depicts the complexities of Maya’s inner life by effectively capturing it in the external landscape which she inhabits.

The representation of nature in fiction is an ever-evolving trend as it is no longer confined to the depictions which portray the natural with all its beauty and power. Amitav Ghosh provides a new slant to the intimate relationship between ecology and the social world by projecting the overriding environmental concerns in his ground-breaking fiction and non-fiction works. His critically acclaimed novel The Hungry Tide is an environmentally oriented work which is set in the Sundarbans which is abounded by animals and revolves around the lives of Kanai, Piya, the ecologist and Fokir the native inhabitant.

The interplay of the human and non-human in the novel brings about an intellectual dilemma as Ghosh effectively grapples with two major provinces namely, the endangered ecosystem and the predicament of the native inhabitants who were brutally killed or evicted, which are deeply entrenched in the fabric of the narrative. He takes a detour from the conventional portrayal of the natural as the picturesque background created intentionally by past writers in order to add an aesthetic dimension to their narratives. Rather, nature in itself exists as a dynamic flow which is vividly captured by the writer as Ghosh writes “Mangrove leaves are tough and leathery, the branches gnarled and the foliage often impassable dense. Visibility is short and the air still and fetid. At no moments can human beings have any doubt of the terrain’s utter hostility to their presence, of its cunning and resourcefulness, of its determination to destroy and expel them.”

In his interview with “The Wire”, Ghosh talks about the novel as a “symptom of a broader imaginative failure” as he reinforces the obligation of fiction to address the pressing environmental concerns which have a profound influence on our everyday existence. His major non-fiction work The Great Derangement critically engages with the broad theme of climate change as he asserts that our future generation may think of us as “deranged” as we have not been able to effectively examine the dangers of global warming at the level of literature, history and politics. His significant contribution to the intellectual, political and social domain through such pertinent questions which he interrogates in his thought-provoking writings provides a new dimension to perceive the natural landscape with all its contemporary realities.

Literature has always played a critical role in creating a philosophical understanding of nature by constructing aesthetic categories and perceptions. The worldview of Amitav Ghosh, which manifest itself in his outstanding critical works, take us closer to the environmental crises which call for urgent collective action as he passionately writes,

“When I look into my past the river seems to meet my eyes, staring back, as if to ask, Do you recognize me, wherever you are? Recognition”