26 Environmentalism, Destabilization, Globalization: Amitav Ghosh – The Hungry Tide

Ananya Bhattacharjee

About the Author

Amitav Ghosh was born on 11th July, 1956 in Calcutta and belongs to a Hindu Bengali family. He is the son of Shailendra Chandra Ghosh who was an officer in the Indian Army during pre- independence times. Ghosh received his education from The Doon School, St. Stephen’s College, Delhi; Delhi University, Delhi School of Economics, St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. It was in 1999 that Ghosh was appointed as a Professor in Comparative literature at Queen’s College, New York. He has also been a visiting Professor at Harvard University. When he came back to India, he started working on the Ibis trilogy, two of which comprises of Sea of Poppies (2008) which is the first volume and River of Smoke (2011) is the latest fiction work that have been already published.

Amitav Ghosh is hailed as one of the most powerful writers of Indian English Fiction. He worked as a print journalist in The Indian Express during the Emergency and had a first-hand experience of socio-political condition of the contemporary times. His first work is titled The Circle of Reason (1982) where he depicts an individual, who being suspected as a terrorist, flees from unknown village in Calcutta to Bombay and further journeys around the Persian Gulf to North Africa. The Shadow Lines (1986) deals with a family that lives in Kolkata and Dhaka and also unfolds their connection with a British family that lives in London. The Calcutta Chromosome (1995) is written in the genre of science fiction and was quite popular due to the innovative attempt made in its creation. Ghosh won Arthur C. Clarke Award for it, a prestigious award given by Britain for Science. The novel procured him Sahitya Academy Award. He is also the author of The Glass Palace (2000) and The Hungry Tide (2004). He was also honoured with the Padma Shri in 2007. His famous non-fiction works are In an Antique Land (1992), Dancing in Cambodia and at Large in Burma (1998), Countdown (1999) and The Imam and the Indian (2002).

It is seen that most of Ghosh’s works have a historical setting, the most notable being the Ocean world. In an interview with Mahmood Kooria he said,

It was not intentional, but sometimes things are intentional without being intentional. Though it was never part of a planned venture and did not begin as a conscious project, I realise in hindsight that this is really what always interested me most: the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the connections and the cross-connections between these regions.

Introducing the Novel

The Hungry Tide is set in the Sundarbans meaning “beautiful forest” which comprises of more than ten thousand square kilometers. This delta region is a labyrinth of rivers and islands and also has the largest mangrove ecosystem in the world. The Sundarbans is situated in the northern part of the Bay of Bengal. It is rich in flora and fauna and is the home of the Bengal tiger and a variety of snakes and crocodiles. The Government of India has taken steps to preserve its natural resources which include the endangered species like the Royal Bengal Tiger and the Gangetic dolphins called as Orcaella. The preservation of the region has given rise to confrontation with the local people and this conflict provides a part of the historical background of the novel. The place is quite treacherous as the tides are unpredictable and reach miles inland and emerge the mangroves there which reappear after some hours. Very few people settle in this area and the ones who do are the dispossessed and the displaced having no other place to settle in. Most of them are fishermen whose life depends upon the fish and crabs for meeting their needs of daily survival.

The novel starts with the stories of Kanai Dutt and Piyali Roy who are waiting on the railway platform in Calcutta to move forward to Canning and embark on their respective quests on the Sunderbans. Kanai was a translator and an interpreter by profession. He is on his way to visit his aunt who lives in Lusibari, the farthest of the inhabited islands of the Sundarbans. Some years back his uncle had kept his diary for Kanai before he died and his aunt, Nilima Bose wants him to come over and have a look at them. Nilima is the head of the organization called the Badabon Trust. The trust that is run by Nilima and the school where her husband was the headmaster are built on the area that was owned by a Scotsman named Sir Daniel Hamilton. This place is called Lusibari literally meaning “Lucy’s House”. It was named after his wife Lucy who was on her way to this place all the way from the far end of Europe when her ship capsized. Hamilton wanted to build a place where “men and women could be farmers in the morning, poets in the afternoons and carpenters in the evening.” It was a utopian vision and he had welcomed people from all caste and creed to Sundarbans where he owned ten thousand acres of land.

Kanai was warmly received by his aunt and both of them were reminiscent about Nirmal Bose, Kanai’s uncle and Nilima’s husband. Nilima recalls how her husband reacted absurdly after he was found on the embankment in Canning. It was during the Morichjhapi incident that Nirmal’s behavior was completely erratic and he seemed to be under a lot of stress. Nilima says,

Some refugees had occupied one of the islands in the forest. There was a confrontation with the authorities that resulted in a lot of violence. The government wanted to force the refugees to return to their resettlement camp in central India. They were being put into trucks and buses and taken away. In the meanwhile the whole district was filled with rumours. I was terrified of what might happen to Nirmal if he was found wandering around on his own: for all I knew he’d just been forced onto a bus and sent off…Someone might have recognized him and managed to make his way back to Canning.

The novel is based on two main episodes-one is Piyali’s quest for research on dolphins and the other is Kanai’s search for the situations that led to his uncle’s mysterious death in 1979. Piyali is a cetologist, one who studies marine mammals like dolphin, whales, whales and dugongs and others. She wishes to do a survey of the marine mammals of the Sundarbans. When Piyali arrives in Canning, she is given a guide and a guard by the government functionaries. However, Piyali was not comfortable with these fellows and she hired the help of a poor fisherman called Fokir. He was the son of Kusum who was Kanai’s childhood friend. Kusum went missing for some years and then the news suddenly came that she was killed. She was one of the revolutionaries in Morichjhapi whose strife towards freedom and selfless love towards her people was much admired by Nirmal who also decided to align with the people of Morichjhapi. She abandoned Fokir as her friend Horen warned her that she is being hunted by a man who wants her join prostitution to fill her mother’s place who had died. Fokir was brought up by Horen who was also a fisherman and his relative. He was five years or so when his mother was killed in the massacre of Morichjhapi. Morichjhapi was a tide country island some distance away from Lusibari. It was a part of the Sunderbans which was reserved for tiger conservation. In 1978 a large number of people came and settled here. They were refugees from Bangladesh who were exploited by the Muslim communists and upper class Hindus. These people had not actually come from Bangladesh but from a resettlement camp in Central India where they were sent after the Partition. The people said that it was more like a concentration camp or a jail in a place called Dandakaranya in the forests of Madhya Pradesh. In 1978 these people broke out of the resettlement camp and settled in Morichjhapi. Since this place was a reserved forest the government authorities declared eviction of the settlers. For almost a year, there was strong conflict between the authorities and the people. The ultimate conflict took place in the year 1979 and it remains a mystery whether Nirmal was a part of it. Nilima says that the idea of revolution attracted Nirmal during his young days and maybe he could not stop himself from joining it when the revolution broke out. But after the Morichjhapi incident Nirmal was a totally different man. He behaved like a stranger with Nilima and did not talk much. The incidents of the Morichjhapi come to light through the papers left by Nirmal for Kanai. Here we know about the politics behind the rehabilitation of the East Bengal refugees who were evicted from the land promised to them on charges of not abiding by the Forest Act.

Piyali starts her survey with Fokir who takes her to the dolphin region. In the Garjontola, Piyali noticed a depression in the mud containing numerous crabs. With the help of her binocular, “she spotted two humps breaking the river’s surface: it was the adult orcaella, swimming in tandem with the calf. With the water ebbing, the dolphins had returned: their movements seemed to follow exactly the pattern she had inferred.” After leaving Garjontola, they entered a mohona. Here she saw some crocodiles and a number of dolphins who were picking the fish from the riverbed. There were small silver fish that jumped in the air and the dolphins seemed to play in the river by making circles with their movements. Piyali was amazed to see the gift and surprises of nature. She then headed off towards Lusibari and went to Nilima’s house as she was invited by Kanai earlier when they had met. She was welcomed by Nilima and Piyali was offered to stay at their place as long as she wanted. Piyali gave them an account of her journey in the island, how she fell from the launch but was saved by the fisherman, Fokir who also had his son with him named Tutul. Nilima at once recognized that it must be Fokir and she was relieved to know his whereabouts as Moyna, his wife was worried about him and her son. Piyali and Fokir continue their survey and one day they are caught in the midst of a cyclone. Fokir moves towards Garjontola and he and Piyali tie themselves to the trunk of a mangrove tree. When the storm subsides Piyali notices that Fokir has yielded to the power of the cyclone and finally succumbed. He was cremated that evening and the rites were performed. Although Fokir and Piyali had language barrier but both shared a sense of understanding and togetherness in this short span of time spent together. Piyali leaves for some time and then returns to Lusibari to work at the Badabon Trust. She also decides to make an effort towards the preservation of the endangered dolphins and proposes to work on a project in the Sundarbans.

Characterisation in the Novel

Nirmal-He was the headmaster of a school in Lusibari and also one of the revolutionaries in the Morichjhapi incident.

Nilima-She is Nirmal’s wife and also the head of the Badabon Trust.

Kanai-He is a Delhi businessman who is a translator. He comes to Lusibari to visit his aunt and also receive a dairy left by his uncle.

Piyali-She is a cetologist who comes to Lusibari to study the dolphins in the Sundarbans.

Fokir-He is an illiterate fisherman who guides Piyali through the backwater in her survey.

Kusum-She was Fokir’s mother who was also a revolutionary and died in the Morichjhapi massacre.

Horen-He is a fisherman and a honey collector. He is also a friend of Kusum.

Minor characters include:

Daniel Mackinnon Hamilton-A Scotsman who hoped to build a safe haven in the Sunderbans for the dispossessed.

Moyna-Fokir’s wife

Tutul-Fokir’s son

Dilip-The man who led Kusum’s mother towards prostitution

Mej da-The guard appointed by the government to help Piyali in her research

Themes and Issues in the Novel

Environmentalism and Destabilisation

The geographical location of the Sundarbans serves as a significant metaphor in the novel. The physical environment is a representation of an active force that connects the plant, animal and human life together and one is affected by the other directly or indirectly. The topographic features, habitats of the people, professions of this tide country are responsible for the formation of their communities. In the novel, we see a co-existence among various kinds of people-rich and poor, educated and ignorant, the local and the outsiders. All these kinds of people face the same consequence while encountering with the environment which comprises of dense forests, rivers, snakes, crocodiles, fishes, tigers and also the natural disasters like the cyclone and terrible storms. The environment is not only important to form the narrative structure but also it highlights the mystery and fate of an individual’s existence even in the midst of a dangerous but at the same time a beauty of nature-the mohona. The people living in close proximity with nature have their own myths and legends about Mother Nature. Here in this novel we have the Bonbibi myth that is necessary in the formation of an identity for the people of this tide country who believe so much in the myths, customs and rituals of the Sunderban jungle and its influence upon their lives. The concept of the jangal is a distinct paradigm which shows the differences between the civilised and the uncivilised people. Zimmermann provides an interesting idea about this concept of a jungle, “The jungle, like the human body, provides a favoured context for a conceptualization of the relations between the outside and the inside, between wildness and culture, and at an even deeper level, for dialectic between the pure and the impure.”

In The Hungry Tide, Ghosh has depicted nature’s resistance towards its regimentation and strict categorisation. We clearly see that nature has its own workings that are beyond human control. In the Sunderbans the boundaries collapse and rivers merge with each other,

The islands are the trailing threads of India’s fabric, the ragged fringe of her sari, the achol that follows her, half-wetted by the sea. They number in the thousands, these islands; some are immense and some are no longer than sandbars; some have lasted through recorded history while others were washed into being just a year or two ago. These islands are the river’s restitution, the offerings through which they return to the earth what they have taken from it, but in such a form as to assert their permanent dominion over their gift. The rivers’ channels are spread across the land like a fine-mesh net, creating a terrain where the boundaries between land and water are always mutating, always unpredictable. Some of these channels are mighty waterways, so wide across that one shore is invisible from the other; others are no more than two or three kilometres long and only a few hundred metres across. Yet, each of these channels is a ‘river’ in its own right, each possessed of its own strangely evocative name. When these channels meet, it is often in clusters of four, five or even six: at these confluences, the water stretches to the far edges of the landscape and the forest dwindles into a distance rumour of land, echoing back from the horizon. In the language of the place, such a confluence is spoken of as a mohona – a strangely seductive word, wrapped in many layers of beguilement. There are no borders here to divide fresh water from salt, river from sea. The tides reach as far as three hundred kilometres inland and every day thousands of acres of forest disappear underwater only to re-emerge hours later. The currents are so powerful as to reshape the islands almost daily – some days the water tears away entire promontories and peninsulas; at other times it throws up new shelves and sandbanks where there were none before.

Amitav Ghosh’s novel explores the theme of destabilisation mainly caused by globalisation. It is based on a true historical incident; the event of Morichjhapi and also concerns the issues of the environment, its protection and conservation of the Sundarbans. Ghosh shows the conflict between the refugees and the government authorities and also focuses on the suffering of the settlers in a hostile environment where they have no other place to go. Kusum one of the revolutionaries of the Morichjhapi fights for the cause of the settlers and regards it to be a severe injustice of evicting these people who are otherwise homeless. She recalls the entire event of the coming of these settlers to the island of Morichjhapi,

Once we lived in Bangladesh, in Khulna jila: we’re tide country people, from the Sundarbans’ edge. When the war broke out, our village was burned to ash; we crossed the border, there was nowhere else to go. We were met by the police and taken away; in buses they drove us, to a settlement camp…But we could not settle there: rivers ran in our heads, the tides were in our blood. Our forefathers had once answered Hamilton’s call: they had wrested the estate from the sway of the tides…There are many such islands in the bhatir desh. We sent some people ahead, and they found the right place; it’s a large empty island called Morichjhapi. For months we prepared, we sold everything we owned. But the police fell on us the moment we moved: they swarmed on the trains, they put blocks on the road-but we still would not go back; we began to walk.

The novel brings to light the politics behind the enforcement of forest act and conservation rules and also highlights the indifferent attitude of the politicians across the border that treat these poor refugees with violence. One of the settlers named Kusum wonders about the importance given to the preservation of the wildlife more than that of human beings and thinks,

Who are these people, I wondered, who love animals so much that they are willing to kill us for them? Do they know what is being done by their names? Where do they live, these people, do they have children, do they have mothers, fathers? As I thought of these things it seemed to me that this whole world has become a place of animals, and our fault, our crime, was that we were just human beings, trying to live as human beings always have, from the water and the soil…

Kanai also holds the same opinion and is sympathetic towards these poor people and he tells Piyali,

Because it was people like you who made a push to protect the wildlife here, without regard for the human costs. And I’m complicit because people like me

–Indians of my class, that is – have chosen to hide these costs, basically in order to curry favour with their Western patrons. It’s not hard to ignore the people who’re dying – after all they are the poorest of the poor…

Globalisation and its Influence

In The Hungry Tide, Amitav Ghosh describes the impact of globalization upon the people of the islands of Sundarbans who are considered to be isolated and removed from modern day technologies and advancements. Through the characters of Nilima and Nirmal, Ghosh exemplifies how far modern technology and thoughts have reached these people of the tide country. Nilima works for the Badabon Trust and it is told “The hospital’s equipments had come from the donors…some from India and some from foreign. There was a diagonistic laboratory, an x-ray room and even a dialysis machine.” The people of the small island of Lusibari have utilized the resources necessary for building a hospital which would ensure a safe and healthy living of its people. The hospital has many modern tools and equipment which is made possible through the process of globalization. Moyna trains herself as a nurse and learns the skill of saving and helping the needy people and this shows how the effect of globalization has also proved beneficial to the rural and ignorant people, “We give the nurses some basic training in hygiene, nutrition, first aid, midwifery and other things that might be useful-how to cope with drowning, for instance, since that’s a situation they often have to face.” The training given to the nurses in the novel also shows how modern technologies and developments are not only circulated through globalization but they are also adapted to fulfill the requirements of various people of a locality. Through the novel, Ghosh hints at the fact that globalization has far- reaching impact upon the people who are considered backward and uncivilized. Through globalization even these section of people have benefitted a lot and the transfer of knowledge and effect of communication will pave the way for further education and advancement in technologies and ideas.

However, Ghosh shows the negative aspects of globalization as well. This is seen in the inhuman and indifferent attitude shown by the urban people towards the settlers of the Morichjhapi. Nirmal’s journal documents the situation of discrimination and oppression done to the refugees there. He refers to a conversation between Nilima and a doctor who is from Calcutta. The doctor says about the situation of Morichjhapi, “Oh, these refugees!…Such a nuisance”. Although the doctor is well informed about the actual incident and torture that the refugees had to face he still remains detached from the entire event and does not sympathise. We see how the social categories and hierarchy alienate the poor and the underprivileged. Moreover some of the environmentalists and the people who are engaged in the tourist industry promote the preservation of wild life especially the tigers without visiting the Sundarbans and even knowing the suffering of the people who live in this part of the country. Terri Tomsky in “Amitav Ghosh’s Anxious Witnessing and the Ethics of Action in The Hungry Tide” says, “Bengal’s Sundarbans epitomize subalternity: it is a region that, until the advent of its environmental significance, was seen as inconsequential in the political and economic calculus of the nation-state.” The lives of animals are supposed to have more significance than that of the people living in the Sundarbans as the wild life yields more revenue from the visiting tourists. Not only that the elite section of people feel a sense of detachment towards the subaltern settlers of this region. This sense of detachment arises from the feeling of superiority of class and ethnocentrism. In this context Tomsky observes, “In order to be an ethically engaged cosmopolitan, one must be sensitive to particularities and local conditions. They must learn to identify with the other.” In the novel, Kanai who lives in New Delhi cannot relate to the people of the islands of Sundarbans when he comes to Lusibari. An entirely different region that this tide country was, Kanai was unable to treat the people there with equality as we see with the case of Fokir who was considered inferior by him due to their class differences. Through this novel Ghosh tries to bring to light the idea that the lives of the subalterns can be improvised through the process of globalization only if the cosmopolitans move beyond the established social norms and class discrimination.

Narrative Structure of the Novel

The Hungry Tide is one of the most popular novels written in Indian English Literature. Amitav Ghosh raises an important issue that of the relation between humans and the wildlife and how one is affected by the other. For this the setting that he chooses is quite significant in itself, the Sundarbans. The place is believed to have derived its name because of the mangroves which is locally known as sundari tree. However in the novel the Sundarbans is referred to as the ‘beautiful forest.’ It is a place rich in flora and fauna and is characterized by the confluence of river channels consisting of both fresh and salt water, the environment acts as a dominant force in the novel which determines the fate of almost all the people in the island. Ghosh is gifted with an excellent sense of place as is seen in his other novels as well. Not only is the setting an important factor in the narrative but he sets the novel against a historical backdrop. The novel recounts the eviction of the refugees of Morichjhapi in 1979 by the Left Front government of West Bengal. Ghosh’s narrative is a combination of fact and fiction that depicts the lives of the people of the island of Sundarbans, their customs and beliefs but also revisits the past and documents the Morichjhapi incident in 1979 that is a true event in history. The novel comprises of many other histories apart from the Morichjhapi event. We have the story of life cycle of the Orcaella, how it was identified and the history of the aquatic life of which it is a part. There is also reference to the story behind the foundation of the town of Canning, the shipping inspector named Henry Piddington who named cyclones which devastated the regions, the dreams of Sir Daniel Hamilton who visioned the making of an ideal community in the Sundarbans, the legend of Bon Bibi, the rituals and customs of the local people and the present story of the life of Nilima, Kanai, Piyali, Fokir and others in the novel. The islands of Sundarbans are constantly affected by the flood tide or the huge tidal waves formed by cyclones but Ghosh makes us realize that it is the layers of human history together with the collaboration of past knowledge, experience and memory that enhances our understanding of a particular place or region. There is a constant shuffling of past and present events; the past incidents are mostly related to Morichjhapi which we come to know from Nirmal’s journal and the present story comprises of Piyali’s research in the islands and the lives of other characters in the novel namely Nilima, Fokir, Moyna, Tutul among the others.

Story-board

Amitav Ghosh: Life and Works

• Amitav Ghosh was born on 11th July, 1956 in Calcutta and belongs to a Hindu Bengali family.
• Ghosh received his education from The Doon School, St. Stephen’s College, Delhi; Delhi University, Delhi School of Economics, St. Edmund Hall, Oxford.
• He worked as a print journalist in The Indian Express during the Emergency.
• His most famous works are, The Shadow Lines (1986), The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), The Glass Palace (2000) and The Hungry Tide (2004)
• His famous non-fiction works are In an Antique Land (1992), Dancing in Cambodia and at Large in Burma (1998), Countdown (1999) and The Imam and the Indian (2002).
• He won the Arthur C. Clarke award for The Calcutta Chromosome.
• He received Sahitya Academy award for The Shadow Lines.

The Hungry Tide

• The Hungry Tide is set in the Sundarbans which comprises of over than ten thousand square kilometers.
• The novel is based on two main episodes-one is Piyali’s quest for research on dolphins and the other is Kanai’s search for the situations that led to his uncle’s mysterious death in 1979.
• The novel recounts the event of the Morichjhapi incident that took place in 1979.
• The story depicts the exploitation faced by the refugees from Bangladesh.

Themes and Issues in the novel:

• Environmentalism and Destabilisation.
• Globalisation and its Influence.
• In The Hungry Tide, Ghosh has depicted nature’s resistance towards its regimentation and strict categorisation.
• In The Hungry Tide, Amitav Ghosh describes the impact of globalization upon the people of the islands of Sundarbans who are considered to be isolated and removed from modern day technologies and advancements Narrative Structure:
• The setting of the novel is an important aspect of the narrative. Moreover Ghosh sets the novel against a historical backdrop.
• There is a constant shuffling of past and present events.
• The past incidents are mostly related to Morichjhapi which we come to know from Nirmal’s journal.
• The present story comprises of Piyali’s research in the islands and the lives of other characters in the novel namely Nilima, Fokir, Moyna, Tutul among the others.

Reference

• Mukherji, Meenakshi. The Twice Born Fiction: Themes and Techniques of the Indian Novel in English. New Delhi: Arnold Heiman, 1974
• Coupe, Laurence. Myth the New Critical Idiom. New York: Routledge, 2007
• Ghosh, Amitav. The Hungry Tide. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2006
• Lahiri, Jyotirindranarayan. Sudhu Sunderban. Tepantarer Swapna, 2011
• Vattimo, Gianni. The Transparent Society. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992
• Zimmermann, F. The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats: An Ecological Theme in Hindu Medicine. Barkeley: University of California Press, 1987
• www.amitavghosh.com/thehungrytide.html
• www.concentric-literature.url.tw/issues/Water/2.pdf