Human vs. Nonhuman: Environmental Issues and Concerns in AmitavGhosh’sThe Hungry Tide

Abstract

AmitavGhosh, an ace story teller in his text The Hungry Tide discusses on a vast canvas the questions of environmental issues regarding the Sundarbans, drawing from varied sources of factual knowledge. He combines the art of nature writing and fiction at once illuminating the struggle between human and animal both forming an integral part of Nature. Ghosh engages himself in the rhetorics of storytelling weaving fiction and fact, using the pretext of Nature and its environment as the foundation from which to study the politics of human life. In fact, Ghosh had also written an essay titled 'Folly in the Sundarbans' in 2004 wherein he raises the voice of an environmentally conscious writer expressing his concern over the Sahara India Pariwar's grand plan of opening up the unknown regions of the Sundarbans, to human onslaught in the name of eco-tourism, which might have led to anthropogenic infringement of the pristine islands of the region. Any act of globalizing the local must necessarily come with accountability is what the author aims at. This paper seeks to identify the core environmental issues of the Sundarbans, its peoples, habitats, tigers, and dolphins, natural and manmade calamities that represent the entire ecological systems of the archipelago rich in its biodiversity and life forms unique in the whole world. The relationship between varied disciplines such as Literature and Environmental Studies has been harmoniously reintegrated by Ghosh so as to explore possibilities of ethical evaluation of human responsibility towards our environment of which we too are an integral part. In the bargain, the writer has taken significant efforts to give a clarion call towards the understanding and conservation of life in the Sundarbans. Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. By land is meant all of the things on, over, or in the earth. Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism. Its parts, like our own parts, compete with each other and cooperate with each other. The competitions are as much a part of the inner workings as the co-operations. You can regulate them-cautiously-but not abolish them.-Aldo Leopold