A Study of Ecological Interdependence in the Select Texts of R. K. Narayan, Mahasweta Devi, and Amitav Ghosh

Abstract

This research paper conducts an extensive ecocritical examination of ecological interdependence in Indian fiction by analyzing the works of R. K. Narayan, Mahasweta Devi, and Amitav Ghosh. Integrating Narayan’s The Guide and The Man-Eater of Malgudi, Devi’s Breast Stories and Mother of 1084, and Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, Gun Island, and The Ibis Trilogy, the study focuses on evolving ecological consciousness that moves from cultural ecological harmony to political ecological conflict and ultimately to global climatic crisis. R.K. Narayan’s fictional town of Malgudi foregrounds an intimate ecological ethic rooted in traditional social life; Mahasweta Devi’s narratives reveal the violent intersections of environmental degradation, gendered exploitation, and state oppression; and Amitav Ghosh’s fiction links ecological vulnerability to colonial histories, capitalist expansion, and the planetary destabilizations of the Anthropocene. Through an expanded theoretical framework—drawing on pastoralism, eco feminism, deep ecology, postcolonial ecocriticism, environmental justice, and Anthropocene studies—this paper focuses that these authors collectively reveal how Indian literature bridges the local and the global, the cultural and the political, and the historical and the planetary in representing human–nature interdependence. Their works demonstrate that ecological questions cannot be separated from questions of ethics, justice, and historical responsibility, and that Indian fiction provides a vital site for understanding environmental crisis across multiple scales of human experience.