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Bioregionalism In The Hungry Tide

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Bioregionalism is an innovative way of thinking about place and planet from an ecological perspective. A bioregion is literally and etymologically a “life-place”-a unique region definable by natural (rather than political) boundaries with a geographic, climatic, hydrological, and ecological character capable of supporting unique human communities. The bioregional study of Indian English writing will help to cultivate a long term view of place ;and shows how a deeper awareness of the natural and cultural history of a place might shape the future of a community. The paper aims at analyzing some of the features of bioregionalism in Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Hungry Tide and also observes how it helps in building up the ecological consciousness …show more content…

Sunderbans are the archipelago of islands that lie on the border between India and Bengal where the transformation is the rule of life, where rivers stray from week to week, where islands are “made and unmade”(224) The Hungry Tide examines the landscape, the flora and fauna and the people who inhabit the Sunderbans. In his ‘Author’s Note’ Ghosh points out that the two principal settings, Lusibari and Garjontola are ficticious. However, secondary locations such as Canning, Gosaba, Satjelia, Morichijhapi and Emilybari are real. Ghosh clearly foregrounds the terrain where the action happens. What he emphasizes is its impermanence. The landscape is like a book: “a complication of pages that overlap without any two ever being the same”(224) Kanai, the translator, is able to see the difference in just one …show more content…

Hamilton was a Utopian visionary, and he had bought ten thousand acres of the Sunderbans and invited impoverished people to come and populate the place, free to them on one condition-there would be no caste system, and no tribal nationalisms. Despite the crocodiles, tigers, snakes and dangerous tides, the people started living a life in harmony with nature or they lived in integrity with the natural system.
A central element of bioregionalism is the importance given to the natural systems. A natural system is a community of independent life, a mutual biological integration on the order of ecosystem. The very gut of bioregionalism thought is the integrity of natural systems and the culture, with the function of culture being the mediation of the self and the ecosystem.
The integrity of natural system and the culture is another important feature of bioregionalism. A deeper awareness of the natural and the cultural history of a place might shape the future of the community. Sunderbans is a place, a kind of “Utopia; where one’s familiar markers for identity-caste, religion etc-stand obliterated and Nature seems to create undo and recreate a borderless

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