Postcolonial Ecofeminism in Indian Novels in English

Abstract

This paper seeks to outline postcolonial ecofeminism in India in terms of both activism and fiction that explicitly foreground women. I also argue that women's relationship to environment is ambivalent, thus disputing dualism of nature/culture and yet straddling grey area between these two binaries. This is particularly highlighted by women writing Indian fiction in English. An explication of nature/culture dualism will be given to contextualize this study and to explain how dualism affects upon notions of a gendered (ecological) citizenship. This paper seeks to outline lineage of postcolonial ecofeminism in India in terms of both activism and fiction that explicitly foreground women. I argue for a case to be built for women writers, and why they are important for field of literature and environment in an age of accelerated and globalized technological development. While outlining ecofeminism as a field and forms it has taken in India in both activism and writing, I also argue that womens relationship to environment is ambivalent, thus disputing dualism of nature/culture and yet straddling grey area between these two binaries. This is particularly highlighted by women writing Indian fiction in English. A brief explication of nature/culture dualism will be given to contextualize this study and to explain how dualism affects upon notions of a gendered (ecological) citizenship. Postcolonial ecofeminism is a concept which has been in circulation for some time but is still at a nascent stage. The related fields of postcolonial ecocriticism and ecofeminism have been dominated by a typically Euro-American point of view till date, and both fields do not address issue of postcolonial ecofeminism adequately, where both fields need to recognize the double-bind of being female and being colonized (1). A postcolonial ecofeminist perspective would involve coming together of postcolonial ecocriticism and ecofeminism into one analytical focus, where it would be necessary to recognize that exploitation of nature and oppression of women are intimately bound up with notions of class, caste, race, colonialism and neo-colonialism. Postcolonial ecocriticism focuses on intersection of postcolonial and environmental issues. Many critics, particularly from strain of deep ecology, have asserted that postcolonialism is inherently anthropocentric and