Volume V Special Issue VI December 2025

Name of Author : Devika S Nair

Title of the paper : Colonial Ecologies and Climate Exodus: Reimagining Forced Migration in Amitav Ghoshs The Nutmegs Curse

Abstract: Climate change defines one of the crises of the twenty first century and increasingly seems to displace millions of people. The 2021 work by Amitav Ghosh, titled The Nutmegs Curse Parables for a Planet in Crisis, presents climate change as a result of imperialism and modernity. The Banda Islands massacre by the Dutch East India Company for nutmeg serves as an allegory for the violent process of alienation of the natives from their land. The phenomenon of climate refugees underscores the persistent entanglements between imperialism and environmental exile. The book shows that colonial violence has left behind a style of ecological dislocation like climate migration. The paper explores how the phenomenon of climate refugees is not a recent event rather, its origins can be traced back to the colonial empire, wherein the modern exploitative activities of the extraction of resources by human beings, especially by the corporate industries have resulted in climate change thereby forcing people to leave their land and migrate to other unknown places, thus creating a group of people like climate refugees.

Keywords : Climate refugees, forced migration, The Nutmegs Curse, colonialism, imperialism, colonial empire, extraction, Banda Islands.

DOI :

Page Number : 73-76