Intertwined Destinies: Colonization of Indigenious Peoples and Environment in V. S. Naipaul’s in a Free State

Abstract

Postcolonial ecologies direct our attention to the specially environmental dimensions of literary works by focusing on the often overlooked nonhuman elements, ecological disasters and the inequitable distribution of resources and waste in developing nations. Decolonization has not solved the problems of poverty, corruption, pollution, disorder, and other vices that characterized colonial countries and has brought about little or no significant difference to the predicament of the environment and the masses in postcolonial countries. This situation is vividly demonstrated in Trinidadian-British writer V. S. Naipual’s In a Free State in which environmental problems as well as social issues continue to directly bear on the destiny of indigenous peoples. In this respect, this study discusses how the fate of the environment and indigenous peoples are intertwined, particularly in postcolonial societies with reference to the work of V.S. Naipaul’s novel. The paper engages with the subject of postcolonial ecologies in discussing the relationship between indigenous peoples and the forms of colonization and its impacts that Naipaul describes in the novel. The paper establishes the centrality of indigenous peoples to the modern colonial context while underscoring the continuity of its resulting environmental degradation in the postcolonial context.