Gun Island - Amitav Ghosh
This blog is a task given by Dr. Dilipsir Barad as part of our academic exploration of literature. This blog focuses on Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island and how it represents climate change through myths, folklore, and interconnected stories.
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The presentation explores the profound disconnect between the reality of climate change and our ability to tell stories about it, a concept Amitav Ghosh calls "The Great Derangement." At its heart, the slides argue that modern literature and politics are failing us because they were built on the idea of a stable, predictable world. The "derangement" refers to our refusal to acknowledge that the environment is no longer a passive background, but an active, "uncanny" force. By examining history, Ghosh points out that our current crisis is deeply rooted in colonialism, which discarded indigenous wisdom—systems that once respected environmental limits—in favor of reckless expansion. This has led us into a "Dharma Sankat," an ethical deadlock where every choice to fix the problem seems to create a new compromise or conflict between human development and planetary survival.
To bridge this gap, the slides suggest that we need a new kind of narrative, one that Ghosh attempts in his novel Gun Island. This approach moves away from strict Western realism and instead embraces myths, spirits, and the "unbelievable" to better reflect the strange reality of a warming world. By inverting traditional tropes—such as making the Western character the one who believes in the supernatural—Ghosh challenges the reader to see the world through a non-human lens. Ultimately, the presentation uses digital analysis to show that climate change isn't just a separate topic; it is a "dense network" of events like cyclones, floods, and extinctions that are already rewriting our language and our lives, requiring us to reimagine our politics and our storytelling before it is too late.
This blog explores the topic of Climate Fiction (Cli-Fi) in South Asia, based on the worksheet, videos, and instructions provided by Dr. Dilipsir Barad. It follows the prompts in Notebook LM to analyze how literature, including Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island, represents climate change and ecological challenges in the region.
Research Activity: I selected a research topic on Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island using the prompts discussed in the video Practical Skills for the Use of ICT in Research (01:00:40–01:10:40).
The Amitav Ghosh biographical and bibliographical resource is the most frequently referenced source in this collection, as his literary canon and non-fiction work, The Great Derangement, serve as foundational texts for nearly every other secondary analysis. This specific Wikipedia entry is explicitly listed as a primary reference in the postcolonial analysis of the transfiguration of the South Asian literary landscape.
The academic source most frequently cited for its theoretical framework is Muhammad Manzur Alam’s "Eco-material Rifts in South Asian Anglophone Fiction". Alam’s research is utilized as a core study in Mehreen’s MPhil thesis to examine the derangement of postcolonial ecologies and is also featured prominently in the bibliographies of other analytical articles.
Another frequently mentioned source is Nudrat Kamal’s "What South Asian Sci-Fi Can Tell Us About Our World," which is cited for its historical mapping of the Dastan tradition and early speculative precursors to climate consciousness. Furthermore, the source titled "The Transfiguration of the South Asian Literary Landscape" serves as a central hub of citations, as its own bibliography references approximately 20 of the other specific documents contained within this notebook.
To visualize this network of information, one might compare Amitav Ghosh’s source to the root system of a mangrove forest, providing the essential base from which all other regional ecological narratives in these sources grow.
Based on the detailed academic papers and comprehensive analyses provided in the sources, the following five sources represent the most substantial contributions to the study of South Asian climate fiction and ecological precarity.
1. Muhammad Manzur Alam, Eco-material Rifts in South Asian Anglophone Fiction (PhD Dissertation)
The primary perspective of this dissertation is that South Asian fiction documents the evolution and derangement of postcolonial ecologies through the framework of "eco-material rifts". An extension of Karl Marx’s "metabolic rift," this theory argues that colonial and capitalist interventions have caused difficult-to-remediate ruptures by displacing labor, crops, and marginalized human bodies. The author contends that these rifts demonstrate how global capitalist expansion relies on a hierarchical ordering of the world that treats certain communities and environments as disposable or extractable units.
2. Mehreen, Ecological Rift and Transformative Environmentalism (MPhil Thesis)
This comparative study explores the different ways South Asian and Western "cli-fi" authors address environmental crises. The primary perspective is that while both regions recognize capitalism as a driver of ecological rifts, they propose divergent paths for recovery. The author argues that South Asian writers like Amitav Ghosh emphasize transformative environmentalism through indigenous epistemologies and the spiritual restoration of the bond between humans and nature. In contrast, Western narratives, exemplified by Kim Stanley Robinson, focus on technological and economic paradigm shifts to address the climate emergency.
3. Editorial Collective, The Transfiguration of the South Asian Literary Landscape
This meta-analysis argues that the emergence of climate fiction in South Asia represents an ontological rupture, shifting the region's literary focus from the "Partition effect" of 1947 to the volatile agency of the non-human. The perspective highlights that South Asian writers are crafting a "Yugantic" mode of storytelling—one that documents the dissolution of an aeon while searching for rebirth. The source contends that this literature "decolonizes" the future by rejecting universalizing Western technocratic solutions in favor of plural narratives that honor regional particularities like caste hierarchies and indigenous resilience.
4. Dr. Muhammad Ajmal et al., Apocalyptic Visions: Anthropocene Narratives in Contemporary Pakistani Fiction
This study examines how Pakistani novelists respond to the region's status as one of the most climate-susceptible nations in the world. The authors argue that Pakistani literature serves as an active site of struggle and a tool for creating ecological consciousness. By using "apocalyptic imaginations," these writers frame environmental collapse not just as a global event but as a manifestation of historical colonial plunder and ongoing political turbulence. The primary perspective is that these narratives offer a counter-ecological consciousness based on local history and environmental justice.
5. Dr. Parul Rastogi, Caste, Class, and Climate: Intersectional Readings of Modern Indian Literature
The primary perspective of this article is that climate is not merely "weather writ large" but a social relation that distributes risk and repair unequally. Through motifs such as "sacrificial zones" and "extractive laborscapes," the author shows how caste hierarchies and class exploitation determine who is most vulnerable to environmental precarity. The study argues that reading climate literature without these intersections occludes the mechanisms by which risk is apportioned, insisting that ecological knowledge in India is inherently embodied by the subaltern communities who live at the edges of climate risk.
Analogy for Understanding: To understand the relationship between these substantial sources, imagine a large river delta. Manzur Alam’s work acts as the geological history of the soil, tracing how its nutrients (resources) were shipped away over centuries. Mehreen and the Editorial Collective are like the cartographers and visionaries, debating whether to save the delta with high-tech dams or by returning to traditional water-sharing customs. Finally, Ajmal and Rastogi are the human rights observers on the ground, documenting how the floods specifically hit the poorest villages first because of their location in the "lowlands" of social hierarchy.
Prompt 4 – Identify “Research Gap” for further research in this area.
The sources identify several critical research gaps that offer fertile ground for further inquiry into South Asian climate fiction and ecological precarity.
1. Geographic and National Gaps
While there is substantial research on Anthropocene fiction from the West and India, there is very little scholarship regarding how Pakistani literature specifically addresses ecological disasters, climate change, and apocalyptic imaginations. Current studies call for more critical focus on Pakistani Anthropocene narratives, particularly those that intersect with political violence, economic insecurity, and migration. Furthermore, research should move beyond a single national narrative to explore plural environmental narratives that compare South Asian literary formations with those in Afro-Asian and Latin American contexts.
2. Linguistic and Generic Expansion
Most current scholarship focuses on Anglophone novels, leaving a significant gap in the study of works written in regional South Asian languages. Future research should widen its linguistic scope and pay more attention to understudied mediums such as poetry, theatre, and cinema. Additionally, while "cli-fi" as a label is relatively new, there is a need to analyze how indigenous and folk narratives (such as the Dastan tradition) have historically contributed to or currently shape ecological consciousness.
3. Intersectional and Ontological Complexity
Researchers identify a need to investigate how gender, caste, and indigenous epistemologies further complicate ecological narratives. Specifically, the role of the caste system in climate change vulnerability remains an area requiring more qualitative evidence and qualitative analysis. There is also a specific lack of scholarly research into "waterscapes" and "oceanic posthumanism" within South Asian speculative fiction, which could provide unique insights into how human-animal borders break down in the face of rising sea levels.
4. Psychological and Temporal Dimensions
The sources suggest that further study is needed to investigate climate grief and intergenerational memory within "partitioned ecologies," where the trauma of the 1947 division intersects with modern environmental precarity. There is also a call to integrate indigeneity and historicity as theoretical frameworks to fully understand the connection between past colonial actions and current human ecological behaviors. Finally, using game theory to analyze narratives as simulated environments could offer practical guidance for real-world climate policy and negotiation dynamics.
Analogy for Understanding: Think of the current body of research as a newly constructed dam. We have the main structure (Indian Anglophone novels) and some secondary supports (Western theory), but there are significant leaks (neglected regional languages) and unexplored tunnels (Pakistani fiction and folk traditions) that are vital for the dam to successfully manage the entire river system (the global climate crisis). Until we map these hidden passages, our understanding of the water's full force remains incomplete.
Prompt 5 – Draft a Literature Review ending with hypotheses and research questions pertaining to this research gap.
Literature Review: The Transfiguration of South Asian Climate Fiction
The emergence of climate fiction, or "cli-fi," in South Asia represents an ontological rupture, shifting the regional literary focus from the "Partition effect"—the trauma of the 1947 division—toward the volatile agency of the non-human. This transition marks a move away from terracentric, nationalist narratives toward what Amitav Ghosh calls "The Great Derangement," where the environment functions as a character and historical architect rather than a neutral backdrop. While Western cli-fi often prioritizes technocratic "fixes," South Asian writers are crafting a "Yugantic" mode of storytelling that synthesizes ancient mythological frameworks, such as the Vedic figure of Varuna, with postcolonial critique to document ecological collapse and search for rebirth.
Theoretical Frameworks: Ecological and Metabolic Rifts
Central to the study of South Asian ecologies is the concept of the "metabolic rift," originally a Marxist theory describing the disruption of human-nature symbiosis under capitalism. Scholars have expanded this into "eco-material rifts" to illustrate how colonial and capitalist interventions displace labor, crops, and marginalized bodies, leading to difficult-to-remediate modes of material degradation. In contrast to Western narratives like Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, which emphasizes economic paradigm shifts, South Asian authors often propose "transformative environmentalism". This approach emphasizes indigenous epistemologies, the spiritual side of nature, and the dismantling of colonial extractive motives.
Intersectionality: Caste, Class, and Gender
Scholarly analysis increasingly argues that climate is not "weather writ large" but a social relation distributing risk and repair unequally. In India and Nepal, marginalized communities, specifically Dalits and Adivasis, bear a disproportionate burden of environmental stress due to strategic topographical divisions where lower-caste groups are relegated to flood-prone, low-lying areas. Furthermore, ecofeminist perspectives in works like those of Uzma Aslam Khan draw parallels between the patriarchal exploitation of women and the capitalist extraction of natural resources. These narratives often employ "divine feminism," projecting female figures as saviors and guardians of the forest who maintain ecological equilibrium against human greed.
Regional Specificities and Speculative Hope
- India: Foundational texts like Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and Gun Island explore the conflict between environmental conservation and human survival, highlighting the "slow violence" weaponized against marginalized refugees.
- Pakistan: Contemporary fiction has shifted toward depicting environmental susceptibility through dystopian and realist modes, focusing on glacier retreat and the political economy of indigenous struggle.
- Bangladesh and Sri Lanka: Responses are shaped by "blue humanities," focusing on rising sea levels and dystopian futures where technology and collapse intersect.
- Solarpunk: A burgeoning movement seeks to imagine just and sustainable futures through "multispecies justice" and "indigenizing" science fiction, offering alternatives to white-washed Western futurisms.
Identified Research Gap
Despite the growth of the genre, critical scholarship suffers from a lack of convergence regarding Pakistani Anthropocene narratives, particularly those involving political violence and migration. Furthermore, the role of regional South Asian languages and indigenous folk traditions (such as the Dastan tradition) remains understudied in favor of Anglophone novels. There is also a significant need for qualitative evidence concerning the intersection of the caste system and climate change vulnerability and a lack of focus on "oceanic posthumanism" within regional speculative fiction.
Hypotheses
- Hypothesis 1: Pakistani climate fiction utilizes "apocalyptic imaginations" not as global abstractions but as a counter-ecological consciousness rooted in the local history of colonial plunder and ongoing political turbulence.
- Hypothesis 2: The caste-based strategic division of land in South Asian villages serves as a primary mechanism that exacerbates the environmental precarity of subaltern groups during extreme weather events.
- Hypothesis 3: Speculative fiction that incorporates indigenous folk tropes (e.g., jinns or nagins) provides more effective frameworks for regional environmental mobilization than Western-centric technocratic narratives.
Research Questions
- In what ways do modern Pakistani fiction writers construct narratives of environmental crisis that intersect with state violence and economic insecurity?
- How does the "Partition effect" and intergenerational memory complicate contemporary literary representations of "partitioned ecologies" and climate grief?
- How do regional-language climate narratives (non-Anglophone) differ from global Anglophone cli-fi in their proposed solutions to ecological rifts?
- To what extent can "oceanic posthumanism" serve as a theoretical framework to analyze the breakdown of human-animal borders in South Asian speculative waterscapes?
Analogy for Understanding: Think of the current body of South Asian climate fiction scholarship as a vast deltaic map. We have clearly marked the major rivers (Amitav Ghosh’s work) and the largest islands (Indian Anglophone novels), but many of the smaller distributaries (Pakistani fiction) and underwater currents (caste-based vulnerability and regional language works) remain unmapped. To understand how the entire ecosystem survives the rising tide, we must explore these hidden channels that connect the deep history of the soil to the unpredictable future of the sea.
Learning Outcomes:
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I learned that Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island shows how climate change is not just about the environment, but also about history, politics, and human actions, especially colonialism. Literature can help us understand these connections better when it uses myths, folklore, and stories that go beyond normal realism.
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I also learned that South Asian climate fiction highlights how social factors like caste, class, and gender affect who suffers most from environmental problems, and that exploring regional stories and languages can give new ideas for solving ecological crises.
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