Fragile Ecologies and Marginal Lives in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide

Abstract

Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2004) foregrounds the intimate and often violent entanglement between fragile ecosystems and marginal human lives in the Sundarbans. The novel explores the ethics of conservation, development, and survival within a postcolonial context, situated in one of the world's most ecologically fragile places. This paper argues that Ghosh challenges anthropocentric and state-driven environmental discourses by foregrounding the lived experiences of subaltern communities whose survival depends on an unstable landscape shaped by tides, storms, and wildlife. Through characters such as Fokir, Piya, and Kanai, Ghosh exposes the moral contradictions of environmental protection policies that privilege wildlife over human life. The Hungry Tide integrates ecological realism with political history and cultural memory to propose an alternative environmental ethic based on coexistence, vulnerability, and reverence for indigenous wisdom.