Unfixing Space: Toward Anti-Caste Philosophies of Nature

This paper deals with the Tana Bhagat movement in the period between 1914 and 1919 in order to argue against the existing historiography that sees adivasi protest in Jharkhand as an inevitable struggle of ‘insiders’ against ‘outsiders’, or of ‘indigenous’ people for their immemorial rights over their lands. By discussing the relationship of the Oraons and the Tana Bhagats with the lands and forests of Chhotanagpur, while recognizing the differentiated and changing landscape of the region, and by analyzing the hierarchies within Oraon society, I suggest an alternate reading of adivasi protest in colonial India. I use the stories of the Tana Bhagats, however, to make a larger point as well, a tangential one, as I outline in this paper some of the limitations of the ever-expanding field of ‘Indian’ environmental history. Though environmental history is a well-established field/discipline in the academia today, the previously etched boundaries of ‘Indian’ environmental history are becoming increasingly fluid; we need therefore to understand the shifting terrains of the field. My argument, that discusses some of the ways in which adivasis were framed in the environmental discourse, is intended to be a part of the ongoing dialogue amongst those who write the environment into the larger project of history-writing.

The environmental movement in India was born out of the marriage between the concern for the poor, and the protection of natural resources. The movement has largely focused on the inequity suffered by the women and the tribals, overlooking the vicious web of caste prejudices embedded in the current environmental politics. Using two dalit texts, the study pits the discrimination suffered by the lower caste (in terms of the access to environmental resources) against the partial and exclusivist (Brahminical) approach prevalent in the Indian environmental movement and in the process highlights the caste-based alienation that the dalits face at the hands of upper caste fabricated nature. While the environmental movement seeking a return to the traditional hierarchical mode of living is highly critiqued in this study, the portrayal of dalit life lived in close proximity with Nature is significantly focused upon. The study investigates the relationship that the dalits inhabit with Nature using Baby Kamble's The Prisons We Broke, and Aravind Malagatti's Government Brahmana. The environmentalist strain in the workings and activities of the dalit leaders like Periyar, Phule, and Ambedkar serves as an important point of reference for the study. It also acts as a critique of the upper caste hegemonic dominance in the use of the natural resources and, ironically, even in the movement which is meant for the protection of those resources. Man and Nature have historically been priceless to each other and this relationship incorporates a dilemma. As Bate opines, '[T]he definition begins with 'Nature' as the immediate cause of the entire material world, of all phenomena including humankind, but it ends with an opposition between 'Nature' and humans or human creations or civilizations'. We are both a part of and apart from Nature' (Bate 2000: 33). The study delineates the relationship that the characters in the autobiographies inhabit with Nature; their alienation is viewed to be based on the non-human Nature. The caste based politics renders them

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND TRANSLATION STUDIES (IJELR) ISSN:2349-9451/2395-2628, 2024

This research endeavor discusses the multidimensional connections between ecology, Vedic philosophy, and women's marginalization in contemporary India, as reflected in the writings of Arundhati Roy and Shashi Deshpande. Scrutinizing how these prolific writers use and reinterpret Vedic ideas, the research attempts to reveal the intersectional oppressions that Indian women encounter. According to some research, Vedic thinking, which is frequently distorted and subjected to patriarchal interpretations, has the capacity to provide a narrative that challenges established discourse power structure. Roy and Deshpande have successfully challenged patriarchal conventions and ecological degradation with Vedic ideals through their literary works. Using the theoretical notions from the works of Vandana Shiva and Uma Chakraborty, this research work develops a theoretical framework to examine, how these stories of Roy and Deshpande provide insights into the lives of oppressed and subjugated women and how caste, class, rural-urban inequalities and even environmental concerns are all interrelated. This research enhanced the understanding of the complex relationships between gender, modernization, and tradition that have shaped contemporary India by establishing the women's subaltern perspective. The ultimate objective of this study is to show how Vedic philosophy may continue to be relevant in promoting a more just and sustainable future for women and the environment.

Environment and society, 2022

Caste and race, Dalits and Black people, and the common ground between them have been analyzed in many areas, but their conjunction in the environmental fi eld has been neglected. Th is article locates Dalit ecologies by examining the close connection between caste and nature. Drawing from a plural framework of environmental justice and histories of environmental struggles among African Americans, it focuses on historical and contemporary ecological struggles of Dalits. It contemplates how their initial articulations under the rubric of civil rights developed into signifi cant struggles over issues of Dalit access, ownership, rights, and partnership regarding natural resources, where themes of environmental and social justice appeared at the forefront. Th e intersections between Dalit and Black ecologies, the rich legacies of Black Panthers and Dalit Panthers, and their overlaps in environmental struggles open for us a new historical archive, where Dalit and Black power can talk to each other in the environmental present.

2022

Although there have been articulate studies around Dalits, covering a range of subjects like Dalit histories, anti-caste intellectuals, untouchability, humiliation, human rights, dignity, reservation, gender, food, land, water, and occupation there is still a lacuna in our understanding of weaving these issues together to explore the interrelations between Dalits and environmentalists. It is crucial to note that Dalit critique of present environmentalism, including their perspective on labor, natural resources, village communities, public spaces, animals, vegetarianism, and sustainable development has not been integrated into environmental studies and politics. The aim of this paper is to excavate these narratives and re-situate them within the framework of political ecology, environmental humanities, and ecofeminism. This examination will be bifold and Munjal 1 critically examine the ties between ecological rights and caste consciousness, as well as reassess the autonomy of women or lack thereof through ecofeminist lenses. The paper will employ textual analysis as a methodological apparatus to deconstruct and reconstruct the question of person-environment transactions in Mahasweta Devi's Draupadi.

The Indian Journal of Dalit and Tribal Studies and Action engages with Dalit and Tribal ontology in theoretical and applied Social Science with a definitive focus on Dalit and Tribal episteme. In part the goal is to assist us collectively in recognizing the current potential of social justice towards a caste-free and tribe-sensitive reality. We propose that through dialogue there exists the possibility of evolving ideas about freedom, justice and equality in the context of caste and tribes in India. Daltri Journals are non profit journals that aim to problematise Indian academic content leading to indigenisation and innovative reformulation in Applied Social Sciences. The journals envision relevant, meaningful and efficacious theoretical engagement with contemporary Dalit and Tribal reality.

Literature, 2022

The article identifies the Sundarbans landscape as a ‘marginal scape’ in the context of the Marichjhapi Massacre of 1979. It applies the conservationist vs. environmental (in)justice approach of ecocriticism to Amitava Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and Deep Halder’s Blood Island: An Oral History of Marichjhapi Massacre. It relates the idea of environmental discrimination and injustice based on caste to the misallocation of the ‘Commons’. For the Marichjhapi Dalit Refugees, the Sundarbans landscape and its ecological attributes become an essential medium in reconstructing their layered identity after migrating from Bangladesh to Sundarbans, which becomes marginalized. The paper argues that the management of environmental resources/landscapes has always been in the hands of the rich, entwined with Brahminical hegemony, who try to impose political geography over ecological systems to suppress the dispossessed. It concludes by comprehending that any justice-based approach (here, social and environmental) still favours non-human beings and ends up causing a multi-layered crisis for marginalized human populations.

Borders and Ecotones in the Indian Ocean: Cultural and Literary Perspectives, 2020

I argue that contradictions between contemporary urban Hindutva and more rural and subaltern Bengali Hindu and Muslim religious practices highlight not just deep-seated ideas about caste and community but also reveal a particularly distinct relation to the nonhuman.

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2023

This arti­cle explores the thought of phi­los­o­pher, his­to­rian, and activ­ist Sharad Patil, par­tic­u­larly the way he con­structs the­o­ret­i­cal argu­ments by draw­ing on, expanding, and cri­tiqu­ing the insights of his pre­de­ces­sors in rad­i­cal anti-caste thought, Jotirao Phule and B. R. Ambedkar. Patil advances a par­tic­u­lar read­ing of Phule-Ambedkarism to sharpen his cri­tique of ortho­dox Marx­ism and develop a phi­los­o­phy that could under­gird rev­o­lu­tion­ary egal­i­tar­ian change in India. The arti­cle focuses on two key the­o­ret­i­cal insights elabo­rated by Patil and his read­ing of Phule-Ambedkarism: one his­tor­i­cal, cen­ter­ing on the meth­od­o­log­i­cal and ideo­log­i­cal impor­tance of rewrit­ing longue durée his­tory; the other polit­i­cal-eco­nomic, cen­ter­ing on the way that cir­cuits of exploi­ta­tion and rule get reproduced. The arti­cle attempts to read Patil according to his own meth­od­o­log­i­cal and ana­lytic cri­te­ria. Patil had lit­tle inter­est in purity of the­ory or in defending the bound­aries of the one true Marx­ism or Phule-Ambedkarism. Even while cri­tiqu­ing Phule and Ambedkar, Patil insis­tently asked (as this arti­cle too asks): what did their phi­los­o­phies of his­tory, of knowl­edge, and of polit­i­cal econ­omy enable them to under­stand about the past, pres­ent, and future of egal­i­tar­ian strug­gle in India and beyond?

SALESIAN JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCES, 2018

Since there were no avowed literary theorists among the official participants, let me begin with their perception and the ongoing debate in the field of theory on “nature”. The theorists who make much of the ‘linguistic constructedness of reality’, when, they, take a look at “nature” what do they see – the wild forests, the sublime scenes of beauty as in waterfalls, the countryside of hamlets nestling within the edges of groves or the domesticated picturesque parks? In all of these, is there an unconstructed (linguistically) pure nature out there? Or all of it, whichever way we conceive it, is a matter of how we have come to perceive it, or construct it ourselves in and through the language we have acquired, or, have been brought up to see reality through? While the literary and critical theorists position would be in the affirmative, needing a deconstruction inorder to get to the bottom of whatever truth there may be to the claim for ‘nature’; the opponent, with a scientific bend of mind, on the other side of the debating table would make the claim based on the ‘hole spotted in the ozone layer’ and measured by the scientific evidence; the latter would then be no mere linguistic construct, but rather, the hard veritable ‘reality’ out there. There is indeed a reality out there, irrespective of the manner in which we have been brought/taught to perceive by the advertising companies and market forces. ‘Nature’, therefore, ought to be taken care of and that very concern has brought us together.