Culture, Religion and Nature in A River Sutra By Gita Mehta

Abstract

This paper offers a study of postcolonial novel, A River Sutra by Gita Mehta from an eco-spiritual perspective. It includes the analysis of the ecological implications of Indian religions in it. It aims to explore Mehta’s engagement with the postcolonial issues while dealing with the environmental issues, her presentation of the relevance of nature to the divinity, and her construction of the traditional idea of the unity of diversities and self in the natural and the social world against the Narmada Valley Project. In her stories in the novel, Mehta presents various timeframes and diverse religious beliefs and practices in Indian culture. These religions have played significant roles in defining every aspect of cultural practices and cultural identity. She explores how the British global capitalist imperialists’ culture–nature dualism, which has sustained imperialist rule, has damaged the traditional bond between human beings and nature in India. She reflects a concern for the Narmada Valley Development Project of global capitalist imperialists, which aims to control the nature and has created the contemporary environmental problems around the Narmada River and fractured the traditional bond between nature and human beings. She reconstructs the co-existence of culture and nature and the Narmada River as the source of physical, cultural, and spiritual identities and survival of the Indian.