Volume V Special Issue IV October 2025

Name of Author : Dr. Jahnabi Nath

Title of the paper : Environmental Crisis as a Postcolonial Corollary: An Ecological Appraisal of Anuradha Sharma Pujaris Iyat Ekhon Aranya Asil

Abstract: Anuradha Sharma Pujaris Sahitya Akademi Award winning novel Iyat Ekhon Aranya Asil is a realistic account of the adverse effect of environmental degradation that is caused by human. It takes into account the damage inflicted upon the flora and fauna by human for survival and in the name of material growth in the outskirts of Assams capital city Guwahati. The on going progress in the city life nullifies the existence of non human lives making them lose their habitat and come down to the city in search of food. The Assamese title of the novel meaning Here, there was a Forest itself echoes the poignant consequence of this environmental degradation that cannot be repaired or reversed. Anuradha Sharma Pujari speaks through the journalist the narrator of the novel about the annihilation of nature that is triggered by an obsessive and incessant run for modern life style. The novel exposes the vicious circle of politicians, forest authorities, self serving bureaucrats and rich businessmen responsible for the entire degradation of the forests and hills. The unmindful capitalist craving for wealth and luxury has made a negative mutation of nature, making it inhabitable for both human and non human. This present scenario of the neighbouring localities of the narrator figures as a powerful source of anxiety to her. It leaves her and a few nature loving characters with a sense of loss and helplessness in their inability to retrieve the natural riches. The novel reiterates the need for a symbiotic relation between human and nature, and establishes the fact that this is only human that can retain what is still there in the nature as complete recovery is a far cry.

Keywords : ecology, postcolonialism, modernity, capitalist progress, exploitation, eco-anxiety, solastalgia

DOI :

Page Number : 28-34