Subaltern Ecologies and Environmental Resistance in Contemporary South Asian Fiction

Abstract

Ecological degradation is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, driven by human activities like deforestation, intensive farming, and industrial pollution. This rapid environmental decline has led to societal marginalization through threatened food security as well as vulnerable communities worldwide. The paper identifies this trace in the four prominent Asian novels: The white tiger, The inheritance of loss, The god of small things, and Gift in green. Through the lens of the eco-subaltern framework, the study explores the intersection of degradation of ecology and social marginalization. The paper argues that environmental destruction and societal oppression function as parallel reinforcing systems which exploit the marginalized across these texts. With the help of the concept of Rob Nixon's slow violence, the study unveils the fact that nature is not merely a background setting but an attention space where caste, class, and gendered based suffering become visible. The findings of the study reveals that societal marginalization of these novels cannot be understood through a lens of caste and class discrimination, but must be traced as a convergence of environmental and gendered based exploitation.