Retelling Nature: Realism and the Postcolonial-Environmental Imaginary in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide

• Published in: Transnational literature 2015-05, Vol.7 (2), p.1
• Main Author: Prabhu, Gayathri
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agrarian society; Animal populations; Ghosh, Amitav; Human settlements; Land use; National parks; Predators; Refugees; State policies
• ISSN: 1836-4845

Since its publication in 2005, The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh has been the privileged vantage point that has defined the intersection of the large fields of postcolonial studies and ecocriticism.1 Its thematic concerns - such as the interplay of land use, academic scientific enterprise, the long history of colonial settlement, state policies of environmental conservation, migration and refugee settlement, the overlapping of religious and state boundaries of Hindus and Muslims, subaltern and indigenous populations - have made it the originary text for scholars to work through key debates and 'mutually constituted silences'2 between the two influential fields of postcolonialism and ecocriticism.3 As Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee puts it, this novel 'tells the tale of belonging through a meditation on the issues of language, representation and mimetic techniques that can be read as a meta-textual commentary on the form of his postcolonial novel itself.'4 Where this current essay seeks to be different from the existent large scholarly corpus on The Hungry Tide is through shifting from a theoretical accounting of the novel, to a more internal aesthetically attuned reading. [...]the tiger is a sustained presence through The Hungry Tide, either by suggestion - a pug mark, a distant roar, a rustle in the bushes, a hallucination, a recollection - or through direct encounter.17 The tiger in India, particularly the man-eating tiger, had taken on a mythic status during British rule. In that year, the Government of India launched Project Tiger, and the tiger population has doubled since then.19 Reports have shown a simultaneous increase in the clashes between the people living in proximity to the national parks and the park authorities, as well as fatalities from animal attacks, for which most people are not compensated or are given only paltry sums.20 The resentment in the local populace, mostly poorer sections of agrarian society eking their livelihood from these areas, over their interests being considered subordinate to that of the national park and the predators, has been vividly captured in The Hungry Tide. The cautionary tale against indiscriminate exploitation of nature has been preserved through these archetypes of good and evil. [...]order was brought to the land of eighteen tides, with its two halves, the wild and the sown, being held in careful balance.