Amitav Ghosh: Engendering the Language of Dreams

Abstract

An analysis of four riveting narratives by Amitav Ghosh give shocking insights as to how planet Earth is headed for ‘omnicide’ or extinction of all life forms. Climate crisis, he explains, is in effect a crisis of imagination and culture. With the skill of a consummate artist Ghosh interweaves history, politics and literature and critiques the dominant western worldview, its hegemonistic and arid perspective that has left us deeply implicated in the great derangement of our times. The mechanistic conception of Western Enlightenment alongwith White Imperialistic ideological web of power has promulgated a perspective wherein Nature has been reduced to a mere resource. The White capitalistic gaze has led to ruthless exploitation of ‘Gaia’/Nature and created a carbon economy and resultant global warming with disastrous climate change episodes. But ‘Gaia’/Mother Earth is a living presence celebrated in the songs, stories and cultural practices of colonized Indigenous populations. Ghosh’s narratives reinstate these forgotten, underestimated values and reading of life. He is emphatic of the belief in the power of Literature, especially the Novel to rise to this crisis and establish a deep resonant communication in its transactions with the environment and the world around us. Postcolonial angst gives way to an international vision of our common humanity. The Novel, he opines, should engage with serious issues of collective interest, enter into creative dialogue with the ‘other’ and non-human voices, re-establish reverence and kinship with all life forms and become a vehicle for regeneration and transformation of perspective.