Feminist Ecologies and Environmental Grief in Indian Women

Abstract

The emergence of environmental problems in the contemporary world has spurred interest in the links between gender, environment, and inequalities among scholars. However, the mainstream discourse on environmental issues tends to present climate change as an equal experience for all people, without taking into account gender and social differences related to the impacts that ecological collapse leaves. This paper explores the role of labour, displacement, care, and embodiment in representing environmental trauma through the lens of Indian literature. Building on the theories of Rob Nixon's slow violence, Stacy Alaimo's trans-corporeality, eco-feminism, and environmental humanities, the paper explores the environmental tragedies reflected in Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017), Easterine Kire's When the River Sleeps (2014), and Indra Sinha's Animal's People (2007). Using qualitative textual analysis, the paper attempts to demonstrate that these literary examples provide a critical perspective on anthropocentric discourses about environmental destruction and its impacts on society. The paper shows that the selected novels do not view environmental collapse solely in material terms; rather, they highlight the emotional dimension of the problem such as grief, anxiety, displacement, and broken ties of care.

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