This blog is written as a task assigned by the head of the Department of English (MKBU), Prof. Dilip Barad Sir. Here is the link to the professor's worksheet for background reading: Click here.
Activity 1: Digital Source Integration using NotebookLM
.png)
This video has been generated using NotebookLM:
Mind map
.png)
Research Activity:
Climate Change and Forced Migration: Eco-Postcolonial Ethics in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island (2019)
| Source Title | Publication Date | Author Credentials | Source Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| "What were young people to do?" | January 2023 | Monique Farrugia and Júlia Isern (LLM candidates); Nikita (Strafrecht student) | Secondary Analysis |
| "A Powerful Translingual Cli-Fi Story" | 8 October 2021 | Lisa Schantl (Writer for Tint Journal) | Opinion Piece (Review) |
| "Digital Age Man as Technology Possessed Impersonal Systems" | May 2024 | G. Shobitha (Research Scholar); Dr. S. Sridevi (Professor of English and Principal) | Secondary Analysis |
| "Climate Change and Forced Migration: Eco-Postcolonial Ethics" | Unspecified (Cites sources up to 2025) | Not explicitly stated in excerpt | Secondary Analysis |
| "Eco-Spiritual Threads: Karma, Dharma, and Ecosystem" | 18 July 2025 | Muhammad Hafeez ur Rehman (Ph.D. candidate and Lecturer in English) | Secondary Analysis |
| "Environmental Crisis... and Nature-Culture Dichotomy" | Unspecified (Cites 2023 sources) | Anita Pal (Research Scholar, Department of English) | Secondary Analysis |
| "Exploring Environmental Degradation and Climate Change" | 31 October 2024 | Dr. Deep Shikha Karthik (Assistant Professor of English) | Secondary Analysis |
| "Exploring Porous Borders in The Hungry Tide and Gun Island" | 2025 (Online 30 November 2025) | Sabine Lauret-Taft (Associate Professor) | Secondary Analysis |
| "Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh - Scholars Commons @ Laurier" | 15 October 2020 | Tathagata Som (Ph.D. student and published poet) | Opinion Piece (Review) |
| "Humans and Nonhumans in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island" | 5 January 2024 | Eva-Karin Elisabeth Berlingieri (Bachelor’s student in Literature) | Secondary Analysis (Thesis) |
| "Political Ecology in Ghosh’s Indian Anthropocene Fiction" | Unspecified (Cites 2022 sources) | Selvanayaki V.; Dr. M. John Suganya (PSG College, Department of English) | Secondary Analysis |
| "Postcolonial Nonhuman Blurring (B)orders" | 2022 | Ashwarya Samkaria (Independent Researcher) | Secondary Analysis |
| "Precarity, Catastrophe and the Anthropocene" | 30 June 2025 | Dr. Kankana Bhowmick (Independent Researcher, Ph.D. in English) | Secondary Analysis |
| "Reclaiming the Unreal... and Literary Imagination" | 15 August 2025 | Zakiyah Tasnim (Department of English, University of Chittagong) | Secondary Analysis |
| "Resilience and Survival in the Sundarbans" | July 2025 | Deepa Nair (Author) | Secondary Analysis |
| "Everyday Anthropocene and Multispecies Kinship" | August 2024 | Asima Gogoi (Research Scholar); Anurag Bhattacharyya (Associate Professor) | Secondary Analysis |
| "The Mythic Imagination in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island" | October 2025 | C. Mobisha Keni (MA student); A. Annie Divya Mahisha (Assistant Professor) | Secondary Analysis |
| "The Crisis of Climate and Immigration" | 2021 | Trina Bose and Amrita Satapathy (Academic researchers) | Secondary Analysis |
| "The Synergy of History and Ecology" | Unspecified (Cites 2025 sources) | Kalaivani D. G. (Assistant Professor of English) | Secondary Analysis |
Prompt 2- Which of these sources are most frequently cited or referenced by other sources in this notebook?
Based on the provided sources, the most frequently cited authors and works among the academic papers in this collection are Trina Bose and Amrita Satapathy (2021), Tathagata Som (2020), and Ashwarya Samkaria (2022). Additionally, Source 4 ("Climate Change and Forced Migration") serves as a central hub, referencing almost all other materials in its comprehensive bibliography.
The following sources are frequently referenced by other analyses within the notebook:
1. Trina Bose and Amrita Satapathy (2021)
The study titled "The Crisis of Climate and Immigration" is extensively cited for its insights into the intersection of environmental catastrophe and human displacement.
- Source 10 (Berlingieri) relies heavily on their work to explain the correlation between natural disasters and the increase in traffickers, noting that poverty resulting from supply chain disruptions forces inhabitants to leave their homes.
- Berlingieri also cites them regarding the symbolic meaning of "Sinai" (derived from sin-ah, meaning hatred) and the difference between historical slave trades and modern refugees, which is defined by the refugee's personal determination to migrate.
- Source 8 (Lauret-Taft) cites them to demonstrate how Gun Island encourages readers to consider major types of exploitation in human trafficking.
2. Tathagata Som (2020)
Tathagata Som's review and his work on the "Place of the Planet" are referenced by several researchers to understand Ghosh's subversion of Western modernity.
- Source 12 (Samkaria) quotes Som’s observation that the juxtaposition of pre-modern myth with contemporary climate change reframes migration as a shared species history between humans and non-humans.
- His analysis of the syncretism of the Gun Merchant shrine and its place on the India-Bangladesh border is included in the foundational context for Source 11 (Selvanayaki & Suganya) and the meta-analysis in Source 4.
3. Ashwarya Samkaria (2022)
Samkaria's paper on "Postcolonial Nonhuman Blurring (B)orders" provides a significant theoretical framework for the more recent sources in the notebook.
- Source 19 (Kalaivani) explicitly states that it draws on post-anthropocentric theory established by Samkaria to illustrate how Ghosh endows non-human entities with agency.
- Kalaivani further cites Samkaria when discussing border ecologies and the necessity of reading the climate crisis across species boundaries.
4. "Climate Change and Forced Migration" (Source 4)
While it is an anonymous report, it functions as a primary reference point for the notebook because its bibliography includes:
- Monique Farrugia et al. (2023) regarding European gaps in migration policy.
- Muhammad Hafeez ur Rehman (2025) for eco-spiritual themes.
- Zakiyah Tasnim (2025) for the reclamation of the "unreal."
- Deep Shikha Karthik (2024) and Kankana Bhowmick (2025) for explorations of precarity and environmental degradation.
Internal Citation of Primary Texts
It is also worth noting that nearly every source in this notebook cites Amitav Ghosh’s non-fiction precursors, "The Great Derangement" (2016) and "The Nutmeg's Curse" (2021), to contextualise their arguments on the "crisis of imagination" and the colonial roots of climate change.
Prompt 3 - Summarize the primary perspective of the top five most substantial sources
The following summaries represent the primary perspectives of the five most substantial academic and analytical sources provided:
1. Eco-Postcolonial Ethics and Mythic Realism (Source 4)
This source argues that Gun Island acts as a narrative bridge connecting the localized vulnerabilities of the Sundarbans to sinking global cities like Venice to illustrate planetary environmental injustice. It posits that Ghosh purposefully employs "mythic realism" to challenge the limitations of the modern realist novel, which historically failed to represent the agency of non-human forces. By weaving together 17th-century folklore and contemporary science, the novel constructs a relational ethics that highlights how climate change is a contemporary extension of imperial exploitation.
2. Eco-Spiritual Threads: Karma, Dharma, and Ecosystem (Source 5)
This analysis proposes a tripartite Hindu philosophical framework to interpret the novel: karma (the law of cause and effect), dharma (righteous duty), and ecosystem (sacred interdependence). The author argues that Ghosh frames the climate crisis and the displacement of refugees as "karmic consequences" of centuries of human excess and colonial extractivism. Ultimately, the source suggests that the novel offers a "dharmic" ecological ethics as a remedy, urging a transformation from secular skepticism to an eco-spiritual awakening that recognizes non-human entities as "kin".
3. Interdependence and Non-human Agency (Source 10)
This ecocritical analysis focuses on the interdependent relationship between nature and humanity, asserting that nature is an active force reacting to human behaviour rather than a passive setting. Drawing on the concept of the Anthropocene, the source argues that human actions have become a "force of nature," rendering the traditional distinction between nature and culture obsolete. It highlights how humans and animals must modify their life stories and narratives to survive in a world where the environmental "uncanny" has become the new reality.
4. Political Ecology and the Critique of Capitalism (Source 11)
This source examines the novel through the lens of political ecology, linking the climate crisis to the political economy and history of colonialism. It identifies the "war between profit and nature" as a central theme, illustrating how neoliberal capitalism and industrial activities create "oceanic dead zones" and drive human trafficking. The authors conclude that Ghosh uses historical fiction to record the systemic reasons behind climate refugeeism, advocating for a reconciliation between human society and the natural world.
5. Porous Borders and the Digital Frontier (Source 8)
This comparative study explores the recurring motif of porous borders—natural, political, and digital—which crystallise the fragility of a world in peril. It argues that water borders reveal the shared vulnerability of species and cultivate a sense of global disaster by mirroring landscapes like the Sundarbans and Venice. Furthermore, the source highlights the role of "digitized borders" and technology (such as the internet as a "magic carpet" for migrants), suggesting that Ghosh uses these elements to interrogate how knowledge and reality are mediated in the 21st century.
Prompt 4 - Identify 'Research Gap' for further research in this area.
The sources identify several critical research gaps for further academic and legal exploration, particularly regarding the intersection of environmental ethics, non-Western belief systems, and international policy.
1. Comparative Postcolonial Ecospiritualities
A primary gap identified for future research is the need to move beyond Hindu philosophical frameworks to examine how other non-Western cosmologies conceptualise ecological belonging. While the provided analyses focus heavily on Hindu concepts such as karma and dharma, there is significant potential in exploring how Indigenous, African, Islamic, and Buddhist traditions frame ethical relationality and karmic causality within climate fiction. Research could further investigate the burgeoning field of eco-mythology—the study of how ancient myths encode environmental ethics—to provide the imaginative frameworks that purely technological paradigms lack.
2. The 'Asylum Gap' and Legal Validity
The sources highlight a substantial gap in international refugee law, specifically the failure to recognise "climate change" as a valid ground for asylum. Currently, there is no legal position carved out for climate refugees, leaving them in a state of "permanent legal liminality" where they must often deceive migration officers with stories of political or religious persecution to gain footing in "Fortress Europe". Further research is needed to develop a humane, future-proof legal framework that incorporates the specific needs and experiences of those displaced by environmental collapse. This includes exploring the proposed status of "permanently forced migration" for climate-affected populations.
3. Translingual Narrative and Linguistic Choices
From a literary perspective, there is a noted gap in understanding the intentions behind translingual storytelling. One analysis points out an inconsistency in Ghosh’s narrative: while Bengali words are frequently translated, Italian phrases are often left untranslated, prompting a need for deeper study into how code-switching and translation choices influence the reader's engagement with the "multispecies" and "trans-historical" world.
4. Digitisation of Borders and Knowledge
While the role of technology in migration is discussed, a research gap exists in how "digitised borders" and the internet reframes our understanding of physical space. The sources suggest that the transition from archival written knowledge to ephemeral, dematerialised digital reality represents a "crisis of knowledge" that requires further interrogation. Research could focus on how the "omnipresence of technology" takes over human will and how literature can reimagine new futures in this period of global transition.
5. Multispecies Justice and Ethical Accountability
There is a call for further exploration into multispecies justice, which advocates for the rights of both humans and non-humans. The sources suggest that standard climate discourses often reduce the crisis to technical fixes or carbon metrics, neglecting the historical agency of the non-human world. Future scholarship could focus on establishing a narrative ethics that recognises non-human entities as active historical witnesses and participants in shared planetary destinies.
Prompt 5 - Draft a Literature Review ending with hypotheses and research questions pertaining to this research gap.
This literature review examines the critical landscape surrounding Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island (2019), focusing on its portrayal of planetary instability, forced migration, and the "asylum gap" within current legal and imaginative frameworks.
1. The Crisis of Realist Representation and Mythic Realism
A primary concern in the scholarship is Ghosh’s own assertion in The Great Derangement (2016) that the modern realist novel is uniquely ill-equipped to confront the climate emergency. Scholars argue that Gun Island serves as a direct narrative response to this "crisis of imagination" by purposefully embracing the "environmental uncanny"—events where non-human forces act on a global scale with unpredictable consequences. By weaving 17th-century Bengali folklore (the legend of the Gun Merchant) with contemporary ecological science, Ghosh creates a "mythic realism" that recognizes nature as an active, sentient agent rather than a passive background. This approach is seen as a method to "re-enchant" the world, urging a shift from secular skepticism to an awareness of multispecies justice.
2. Forced Migration and the 'Asylum Gap'
A substantial body of analysis focuses on the intersection of environmental catastrophe and human displacement. The sources highlight a critical "asylum gap" in international law: the 1951 Refugee Convention recognizes political or social persecution but does not acknowledge climate change as a valid ground for asylum. This leaves climate refugees, such as the characters Tipu and Rafi, in a state of "permanent legal liminality". In Gun Island, this manifests as a "black market" of migration, where "storymakers" must invent tales of religious or political persecution to help refugees gain footing in "Fortress Europe". Scholars note that natural disasters in the Sundarbans, like Cyclone Aila, create a cycle of poverty and "choicelessness," forcing the young to migrate through dangerous, clandestine routes.
3. The Digitisation of Borders and Precarity
The role of technology is identified as a double-edged sword in modern migration. On one hand, the internet is described as the "migrants' magic carpet," allowing the illiterate to navigate international borders via voice recognition and virtual assistants. On the other hand, technology facilitates a massive clandestine trafficking industry and creates "impersonal systems" that strip humans of their "sense of presence" and will. This leads to a state of "hyper-precarity," where undocumented migrants are stripped of legal protections and become fodder for illegal labour markets and organ trade.
4. Eco-Spiritual Ethics: Karma and Dharma
Recent scholarship introduces a tripartite Hindu eco-spiritual framework—karma, dharma, and ecosystem—to interpret the novel’s vision of planetary ethics. Environmental degradation is framed as a "karmic consequence" of historical exploitation and colonial extractivism. Dharma (righteous duty) is proposed as the ethical remedy, advocating for a responsibility that recognizes non-human beings as "kin" and challenges the "ontological violence" of capitalist modernity.
Research Gap: Integrating Narrative Ethics into Migration Policy
While the sources extensively discuss the legal failures and the spiritual dimensions of the Anthropocene, there is a distinct research gap in how the "mythic realism" and "multispecies justice" found in literature can be practically translated into humane migration policy. Most research identifies the problem (legal invisibility) and the narrative solution (re-enchantment), but lacks a framework for bridging the two.
Hypotheses
- Hypothesis 1: If international refugee law incorporates the status of "permanently forced migration" (as suggested by the EU Commission’s Directorate General), it will reduce the reliance on the "storymaking" black market and human trafficking networks.
- Hypothesis 2: Narrative ethics that recognize non-human agency (multispecies justice) provide a more effective framework for climate resilience than purely technocratic or carbon-centric solutions.
Research Questions
- How can the concept of "relational ethics" and "dharmic duty" be used to reform the principle of non-refoulement to include victims of environmental degradation?
- In what ways does the "digital border" mask the systemic racial and economic inequalities that drive climate refugees into hyper-precarity?
- How can literary representations of the "environmental uncanny" serve as psychological evidence for the necessity of a "planned exit" for communities in sinking regions like the Sundarbans and Venice?
.png)
Audio podcast:
Short video explanation:
Mind map:
Report:
The Voice-Carrier: Folklore as a Map for the Modern Climate Crisis
1. Introduction: The Power of the "Wonder Tale"
In our current epoch of the Anthropocene, we are witnessing a phenomenon that transcends the boundaries of meteorology and biology. As Amitav Ghosh posits in his critical and fictional work, climate change is not merely a scientific disaster but a "crisis of culture and imagination." While science provide us with the cold cartography of a warming world, it often fails to bridge the gap between abstract data and the visceral human experience. The rational modern mind, conditioned by centuries of Enlightenment thinking, finds the scale of planetary change "unthinkable."
Folklore, however, serves as an ancient "translator." These "wonder tales" provide a narrative framework for events that defy modern logic, allowing us to process environmental shifts as lived, shared stories rather than mere statistics. By utilizing myths like the legend of the Gun Merchant, we can re-engage with a world that is no longer a passive backdrop but an active, vengeful participant in our history.
Key Concept: The Environmental Uncanny According to Amitav Ghosh, the "Environmental Uncanny" refers to the unsettling realization that non-human forces and beings are not separate from us, but are actively exerting agency. It is the eerie recognition that the "wild" is no longer confined to the distant horizon; it has entered our bodies, our homes, and our digital feeds—manifesting through displaced animals, freakish weather, and the collapse of the "rational" world's boundaries.
If the "wild" is now inside our homes via the internet and the weather, the distinction between "nature" and "civilization" has dissolved. To navigate this new reality, we must look backward to older, mythical frameworks that never made the mistake of assuming humans were the only masters of the Earth.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. The Legend of the Gun Merchant: A War Between Profit and Nature
At the center of Gun Island lies the legend of Bonduki Sadagar (the Gun Merchant), a wealthy trader who refuses to acknowledge the divinity of Manasa Devi, the goddess of snakes and all poisonous creatures. His flight from the Sundarbans to a land "without serpents"—a place called Bonduk-dwip—serves as a devastating metaphor for the pursuit of profit at the expense of ecological balance.
Crucially, "Bonduk-dwip" is revealed to be Venice, as "Bonduk" is the Arabic term for the city. This linguistic link bridges the gap between the Bengali merchant and the "Merchant of Venice," positioning the historical pursuit of global commerce as a direct catalyst for the environmental wrath that followed. The Merchant’s refusal to acknowledge the goddess is a direct parallel to modern industrial civilization's refusal to acknowledge planetary limits.
The Eternal Conflict
Actions of the Gun Merchant (Profit/Commerce) | Retribution of Manasa Devi (Nature’s Agency) |
Refusal of Devotion: Choosing the path of the soldier and trader over the recognition of the sacredness of the natural world. | Climatic Rupture: Plaguing the merchant’s journey with droughts, famines, and the 17th-century "Little Ice Age" fluctuations. |
Flight to Bonduk-dwip: Attempting to escape the "inconveniences" of nature by moving to the urban, "civilized" center of Venice. | Invasive Presence: Sending the non-human to follow him across borders; manifested today as yellow-bellied sea snakes on Venice Beach and deadly spiders in Venetian apartments. |
The Pursuit of Dominance: Using wealth and technology to insulate the self from environmental consequences. | The Uncanny Return: Reclaiming human spaces through "aqua alta" (flooding) in Venice and wildfires that incinerate the hills of Los Angeles. |
The "so what?" of this legend is clear: the Merchant’s flight represents the imperial and capitalistic assume-ability that humans can outrun the Earth’s limits. Manasa Devi’s persistence reminds us that in a planetary crisis, there is no "elsewhere." Nature’s agency eventually finds its way into the heart of the metropolis.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Manasa Devi as the "Voice-Carrier"
Manasa Devi is the ultimate "negotiator" or "translator" between species. In a world where humans and non-humans have "no language in common," her mediation is the only force preventing a relationship defined purely by hatred and aggression. She is a "voice-carrier" for those who cannot speak in the linguistic sense, yet respond with agency to environmental stimuli.
Three Dimensions of Manasa Devi's Power
- Ecological Agency: Nature’s ability to "speak" through disasters. This is seen in the "Oceanic Dead Zones"—vast stretches of oxygen-depleted water caused by refineries that dump effluents while keeping politicians in their pockets.
- Multispecies Justice: Advocating for the rights of the non-human. The goddess’s wrath is a demand for recognition, proving that the non-human world is not a resource to be extracted, but a subject with its own right to justice.
- Cultural Memory: Folklore acts as a container for historical climate data. Stories of the goddess preserve the "voice" of loss, such as the transgenerational trauma seen in Rafi, whose grandfather warned him that he no longer needed to learn his craft because the rivers and animals were "no longer as they were."
This "voice-carrying" is a burden of loss. When the environment is silenced by pollution and "dead zones," the goddess speaks through the "choicelessness" of those forced to flee.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. From the "Little Ice Age" to the "Blue Boat"
The "circularity of time" is evident when we connect the 17th-century "Little Ice Age"—a period of extreme famine and storms—to the modern Anthropocene. The Gun Merchant’s flight mirrors the "choicelessness" of climate refugees like Rafi and Tipu, whose lives are framed by the 1970 Bhola cyclone (which killed half a million and triggered the War of Independence) and the 2009 Aila cyclone.
These events are not isolated; they are part of a planetary movement that is "unturning" a centuries-old project of imperial power. For centuries, Europe moved resources and people across the planet to build its wealth; now, the planet is moving people back toward Europe, threatening the "whiteness" of metropolitan territories.
Comparison of Climate Signifiers
- Saltwater Intrusion: In the Sundarbans, the sea renders fertile land uncultivable "forever," dispersing communities.
- The Wildfire of Los Angeles: Raging fires turn the "Land of Sunshine" into a "vast field of ash" that even business-class travelers cannot ignore.
- The Aqua Alta of Venice: The city is "constantly being swallowed up by the ocean," mirroring the precarity of the Ganges delta.
The "Blue Boat" at the novel’s climax is the symbol of "Fortress Europe" facing the "Environmental Uncanny." It represents the end of human mastery, as dolphins and whales circle the vessel to create a chakra or barrier against warships—a moment of planetary environmentalism where non-human agency achieves what diplomacy could not.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. The Digitized Border: Technology as the New "Demon"
Modern migration is unique because it is the first to be fully digitized. The internet acts as a "migrants' magic carpet," yet it is also a "demon"—an impersonal system that strips away human "presence" and "will."
The Digital-Mythical Paradox
- The Magic Carpet vs. The Tracker: While a GPS-enabled tracker on Rani the dolphin serves as a scientific "voice-carrier" for the dying ocean, the virtual assistant on a migrant's phone acts as the conveyor belt for movement, leading them into the hands of traffickers.
- The Loss of Presence: Reliance on digital systems causes our sense of self to fade. We do not exert will on our devices; we are "possessed" by them, becoming impersonal systems ourselves.
- The "Storymaker" Deception: Because "climate change" is not a legally valid motive for asylum in the EU’s new pact on migration, migrants like Tipu become "storymakers." They use digital tools to craft narratives of "politics, religion, and sex" to satisfy a legal system that suffers from a "crisis of imagination."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. Conclusion: Achieving Planetary Consciousness
To navigate the 21st century, we must achieve a "planetary consciousness" that restores the balance between human beings and the natural world. Science tells us how the Earth is changing, but folklore tells us what it means for our souls. We must recognize that we belong to a pluralist society of humans and non-humans alike.
Ultimate Takeaway: An aspiring learner must look to old stories to understand new catastrophes because folklore preserves the language of the Earth that modern rationalism has forgotten. Only by acknowledging the "voice-carriers" of our heritage can we survive a world where the weather, the animals, and even our technology have become "uncanny" mirrors of our own imbalances.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reflection Prompt Analyze a specific myth or local legend from your own culture through the lens of modern environmental change. How does the "voice" of the non-human in that story reflect a contemporary ecological crisis in your region (e.g., a disappearing landmark, a displaced species, or a shifting weather pattern)?
.png)
.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment