Renowned Indian writer Amitav Ghosh was awarded the 2024 Erasmus Prize for his powerful writing on climate change. Ghosh’s 2004 novel, The Hungry Tide, set in the Sundarbans, was one of the early works of fiction by an Indian writer to chronicle the continuing saga of environmental degradation. In his Ibis trilogy, Ghosh delved into the ecology and economy of colonial times, dissecting the imperial forces that shaped an unequal world. In The Great Derangement (2016), he explored the history and politics of climate change, and its links to colonialism. His recently released collection, Wild Fictions, features essays written over the last 25 years, in which he bears witness to a crucial rupture of time. Ghosh continues to “imagine the unthinkable” in his writing, preparing us to deal with a future that is deeply disrupted by climate change. He spoke to Vineetha Mokkil about the reasons for the planetary crisis and the need to take action without giving in to despair
As a keen observer of the planetary crisis do you have hope for humankind?
🥂I don’t believe in the hope and doom binary. There is a certain future coming up that’s going to be thoroughly disruptive. It won’t be anything like the world that we knew or the one that we are in now. For example, when I was growing up, the skies were beautifully clear over Calcutta at this time of year, the air was relatively clean. It was completely different. But the end of the world as we knew it doesn’t mean the end of the world per se. We will have to learn to live with a new kind of world. And even if the future is profoundly disrupted, as we now know it will be, we have to carry on doing what we can. We should address these issues not because we think we can fix them and make everything all right, but because it’s our duty. What we in our part of the world call ‘karma’ and ‘dharma’.
Is this ‘the time of monsters’, when the old world is dying and the new world is struggling to be born?
💯Yes...This is something that Antonio Gramsci said back in the 1930s. And I’m not the only one saying it now because we can see that everything that was normal before has suddenly become abnormal, whether it is in politics or weather or the wider climate impact. And the striking fact is that these things are not disconnected. Climate change or the planetary crisis are part of a historical pattern of geopolitics where the great majority of the world was subjugated by a tiny minority. So, all of this is in some sense a historical pattern of inequalities.
Speaking of inequalities, the model of development being followed in India and across the world is widening the gap...
ꦗThis model is clearly not working and it’s collapsing. At the same time, it has an incredible momentum because it’s making a few people very rich at the cost of the rest of the world. The growth of inequality, both within and between nations, is unbelievable. For instance, in the United States, one per cent of the population now owns almost half of the entire economy. It’s staggering. And that’s one of the reasons why we are heading towards these incredible political disruptions we see occurring across the planet. On the one hand, many leaders of affluent countries pay lip service to climate change and on the other, they go on with business as usual. For example, Norway, which is an immensely rich country, is opening up more and more of its coastal areas to fossil fuel exploration. If countries as rich as that continue to consume enormous quantities of energy and emit huge amounts of greenhouse gases, and at the same time, continue to lecture people in poor countries to cut back their carbon emissions, how does it make sense?
The research for my novel The Hungry Tide was a turning point in my life. Already back then, in 2004, many signs of the planetary crisis were evident in the Sundarbans.
You’ve been consistently writing about climate change and often warning us about what is to come. What made you start thinking so deeply about the planetary crisis?
The research for my novel The Hungry Tideꦅ (2004) was really a turning point in my life. Already back then, in 2004, many signs of the planetary crisis were evident in the Sundarbans. For example, you could see the effects of sea level rise, you could see biodiversity loss happening in front of your eyes. The mangrove forest is so important for the entire region of the Bengal delta. It’s a breeding ground for fish, which is essential for the lives of the people, who depend on it for their protein intake. And we see that dwindling day by day. The mangrove forest protects the interior from the impact of cyclones. This has been its historic role. Climate change is intensifying cyclones and we are seeing more and more phenomena of this kind. At the same time, we are losing whatever kind of resilience we had in the past.
In your book, The Great Derangement (2016), you said that not enough literature is being created to make people aware of the reality of climate change. Has that changed?
ღThere has been a huge outpouring of writing and art on the climate crisis since 2016. I think there has been a big recognition that something has seriously gone wrong. Generally speaking, young people have much greater awareness of what is happening than people of my generation or the generation in between. They realise that they have been sold a bill of goods. The world they thought they were coming into is not what they imagined. So they engage with the world, think about it, and some of them write about it or create art about it.
The existing political structures are not able to come together to tackle the climate crisis. Even the left parties are not stepping up enough.
༺They haven’t stepped up at all...In the US, there is a left wing of the Democratic Party that has been fairly forward leaning on climate change. But even they are placing their trust in market-based solutions. And as we all know, climate change is itself the greatest market failure. So how can you expect the disease to be the cure? It’s so contradictory.
Several people’s movements across India are trying to protect the environment and the resources of indigenous communities. What role do you see them playing in the current scenario?
﷽These movements are very important. One of the reasons I have been aware of the planetary crisis for so long is because when I was a student, there were many ‘science for the people’ movements that were producing critiques of Western science and technology and warning of the consequences. Being exposed to these movements was a major part of my education. These became really energised in India after the Bhopal gas disaster. They are facing overwhelming odds because in recent years, the government has opened up more and more forest areas to mining, and to the tourism industry while displacing indigenous communities. There is an all-out assault on the environment and indigenous communities.
What are you working on right now?
🎃I am in the process of finishing a novel. I’ve been writing a lot of non-fiction and the subjects I’ve been dealing with are all so uniformly depressing and sad. So writing fiction has been a balm for my soul. It’s very nice to get back to it.
When you write fiction, do you ever feel like there is too much world to take in? Do you try to distance yourself from the world?
🃏When you write fiction, you are in a space where only writers of poetry or fiction or music can be in. You can’t make fiction a sugar coating for a whole world of research or facts. I don’t think anyone would want to read that. At the same time, you can’t forget the world that’s around you. And this world is always intruding upon everything all the time. So, once you see that reality, you can’t unsee it for the sake of writing fiction. You have to try and find some way of bringing them together.
