Living Landscapes and Fragile Ecologies in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide

This paper offers an ecocritical reading of Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2004), situating the novel within contemporary debates on ecology, development, and environmental ethics. Set in the fragile mangrove ecology of the Sundarbans, the narrative foregrounds complex human-nonhuman relationships shaped by tides, forests, rivers, and wildlife, while exposing the socio-political tensions between conservation policies and the lived realities of marginalized communities. Drawing on key strands of ecocriticism—particularly postcolonial ecocriticism and deep ecology—the study examines how Ghosh’s narrative strategies, including multiple focalizations, folkloric intertexts (the Bon Bibi legend), and historiographic metafiction (the Morichjhapi episode), challenge anthropocentric models of development and instrumental views of nature. The analysis highlights how the novel represents the Sundarbans as a dynamic, unstable ecosystem that resists mastery, thereby questioning state-sponsored discourses of “eco-development” and ecotourism. By mapping the ethical dilemmas of conservation against displacement, livelihood insecurity, and environmental vulnerability, the paper argues that The Hungry Tide articulates an ecopoetics that reframes nature as an active agent rather than a passive backdrop. The study concludes that Ghosh’s novel advances a nuanced environmental imagination that integrates ecological interdependence with postcolonial concerns, urging a rethinking of development paradigms toward more just and sustainable human-environment relations.