PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
DISCOVERING ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
IN AMITAV GHOSH’S SEA OF POPPIES
A Thesis
Presented As Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement to Obtain the Magister Humaniora (M.Hum) in English Language Studies
By:
Anna Anganita Theresia Latumeten
156332035
THE GRADUATE PROGRAM OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES
SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
YOGYAKARTA
2017 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
APPROVAL
A THESIS
DISCOVERING ENYTRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
IN AMITAY GHOSH'S SEA OF POPPIES
Patrisius Mutiara Andalas" S.J.. S.S., S.T.D. Thesis Advisor Yogyakarta, Novemb er l, 2011 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
THESIS DEFENSE APPROVAL PAGE
}ISCOYERING ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
IN A]VIITAV GIIOSHOS,S'EH OF POPPTES
by
Anna Anganita Theresia Latumeten
Student Number: l5$32A35
Defendetl before the T'hesis Committee
antl Declared Acceptatrle
TIIESIS COMMITTEE
Chairperson : Paui*s Sarrvoto, Ph.D
Secretary : Dra. Novita Ilewi, M.S., M,A (Hcns.). Ph.D
Members 1. Sri Mulvani Ph.D
=Ro 1)-J{,
Yogyakarta, Novemb er 2$, 2017 ate Prograin Director University
Budi Subanar, SJ.
ii PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY
This is to certiff that all the ideas, phrases, and sentences, unless otherwise stated, are the ideas, phrases, and sentences of the thesis writer. The writer understands the full consequences including degree cancellation if she took somebody else's ideas, phrases, or sentences, without proper reference.
Yogyakarta, Novernb er l, 2017
A L\"^'A{' t/' , )_-_-__ Anna Anganita Theresia Latumeten
iii PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
LEMBAR PERI\IYATAAN PERSETUJUAN , PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIATI T]NTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS
Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma: Nama : Anna Anganita Theresia Latumeten NIM :156332035 Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan
Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul:
DISCOVERING EI\IVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL JUSTICE I { IN AMITAV GIIOSH'S SEA OF POPPIES beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian saya memberikan kepada Perpusatakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan dalam bentuk media lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikan secara terbatas, dan mernpublikasikannya di internet atau media lain untuk kepentingan akadernis tanpa perlu memintaizin dari saya maupun memberikan royalti kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis.
Dernikian pernyataanini saya buat dengan sebenarnya.
Dibuat di Yogyakarta
Pada Tanggal 1 Novernber 2017 Yang menyatakan I /)',^/,'e'h'1'L '
Anna Anganita Theresia Latumeten
lv PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I would like to thank Jesus Christ for all of His blessing. I give my gratitude to my thesis advisor, Patrisius Mutiara Andalas, S.J., S.S., S.T.D. for his constructive insight, help, and correction. I thank my lecturers in English
Language Studies, Paulus Sarwoto, Ph.D and Dra. Novita Dewi, M.S., M.A.
(Hons), Ph.D for the insightful class discussions.
I also thank family; my parents H. Carl G. Latumeten and Tormaida E.
Sitanggang, and my brothers Ducke Cristie Elias Latumeten and Denny Fladymier
Kennedy Latumeten for their utmost support. I would like to thank my friends from ELS, especially from B Class of 2015. I also would like to thank my friends from Literature stream; mbak Sophia, mbak Angel, mbak Sabrina, mbak Ludmila, and Wibi. My special gratitude goes to Febby Winda Pelupessy, Jeanne Arini
Ratna Suwanto, Wanda Rizky Kinanty, Maria Consolacion Regala Catap,
Marschall Eirence Metekohy, Yosafat Barona Valentino, Flavianus Batan, and mbak Atyaka Laksmitarukmi for the friendship I cherish so much. Lastly, I would like to thank the academic staff of ELS for their helping hands.
v
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
TABLE OF CONTENTS
APPROVAL ...... i THESIS DEFENSE APPROVAL PAGE ...... ii STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY ...... iii LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN ...... iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... v TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... vi ABSTRACT ...... viii ABSTRAK ...... ix CHAPTER I ...... 1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1 A. Backround of the Study ...... 1 B. Problem Formulation ...... 8 C. Significance of the Study ...... 9 D. Chapters Outline ...... 10 CHAPTER II ...... 11 LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 11 A. Review of Related Studies ...... 11 B. Review of Related Theory ...... 29 CHAPTER III ...... 46 THE EFFECT OF COLONIZATION ON THE NATURE AND THE PEOPLE IN GHOSH‘S SEA OF POPPIES ...... 46 A. The Effect of Colonization on the Nature ...... 46 B. The Effect of Colonization on the People ...... 56 CHAPTER IV ...... 65 RESISTANCE AS A MEANS TO DISCOVER THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN GHOSH‘S SEA OF POPPIES ...... 65 A. The Early Resistance ...... 65 B. Migration and Resistance ...... 69
vi
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
CHAPTER V ...... 85 CONCLUSION ...... 85 A. Significance and Achievement ...... 87 B. Relevance ...... 92 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 95
vii
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
ABSTRACT
Latumeten, Anna Anganita Theresia. 2017. Discovering Environmental and Social Justice in Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies. Yogyakarta: The Graduate Program in English Language Studies, Sanata Dharma Univeristy.
This thesis explores the effect of colonization on the nature and indigenous people, as well as to explore how the effect of colonization is resisted as a means to discover the environmental and social justice. This thesis examines a novel entitled Sea of Poppies (2008) that is written by Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. In raising this topic, it is expected that this thesis is able to take part in the rising awareness of environmental and social justice. This thesis uses postcolonial ecocriticism as the main theory to help in analyzing the text. The debate of the need to bring the issue of postcolonialism and ecocriticism, the relationship between human and the nature in the colonial setting, along with the discussion of resistance in search for environmental and social justice, are brought together in seeing the environmental and social issues raised by the novel. There is an apparent shift in nature‘s role for the indigenous population. Nature and indigenous people previously have a harmonious relationship before the arrival of the colonial. The settlement of the colonial brings about impacts to India in two ways: the exploitation of their nature and the exploitation of indigenous population. Resistance comes as a reaction of the double forms of exploitation.
Keyword: postcolonial ecocriticism, resistance, environmental justice, social justice
viii
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
ABSTRAK
Latumeten, Anna Anganita Theresia. 2017. Discovering Environmental and Social Justice in Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies. Yogyakarta: Program Pasca Sarjana Kajian Bahasa Inggris Universitas Sanata Dharma.
Tesis ini membahas tentang efek kolonalisasi terhadap alam dan orang- orang pribumi, dan juga membahas tentang resistensi sebagai usaha untuk menemukan environmental justice dan keadilan sosial. Tesis ini membahas novel berjudul Sea of Poppies (2008) yang ditulis oleh penulis India bernama Amitav Ghosh. Dengan mengangkat topik ini, tesis ini dapat mengambil bagian dalam menumbuhkan kepekaan terhadap environmental justice dan keadilan sosial. Analisa teks ini menggunakan postkolonial ekokritik sebagai teori utama. Perdebatan antara masalah postkolonial dan ekoritik, hubungan manusia dan alam didalam setting kolonial, dan diskusi mengenai resistensi untuk mencapai environmental justice dan keadilan sosial, digunakan untuk melihat masalah lingkungan dan masalah sosial yang ditemukan didalam novel. Ada perubahan peran alam yang terlihat sangat jelas didalam hidup masyarakat pribumi. Sebelum penjajah tiba, masyarakat pribumi dan alam memiliki hubungan yang harmonis. Ada dua pengaruh yang terjadi akibat pendudukan penjajahan di India, yaitu eksploitasi alam dan eksploitasi masyarakat pribumi. Resistensi muncul sebagai reaksi dari eksploitasi akibat penjajahan ini.
Keyword: postkolonial ekokritik, resistensi, environmental justice, keadilan sosial
ix
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Backround of the Study
In the age of the environmental crises, attention has been given to the problems exist in our nature. We live under the alert that the earth‘s life support system is in danger. Our world today faces serious environmental problems, such as: the destruction of the ozone, air pollution, toxic waste, the extinction of animal and plant species, and more. Our ignorance to these problems may result to such catastrophic future of the earth. We cannot deny the fact that now our earth is suffering. It affects both human and non-human species, namely plants and animals. Ironically, humans are the cause of these environmental problems. By taking control of and mistreating the nature, human beings are responsible for the greatest destruction of this planet.
As we can see these days, green campaigns have been held frequently as an effort to save the nature that is not-so-green anymore. Through the power of the media, for example the internet, people have been trying to take part in raising people‘s awareness in the importance of taking care of our Mother Earth. Various efforts are being actively pursued to raise people‘s awareness. Literature is also one of the ways to be included among these efforts. Literature has been taking part to raise people‘s awareness of the existing problems in the environment faced
1
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
by the earth today. By involving environmental awareness into the writing, writers can use literature to urge people to save the environment.
Environmental crisis is a global issue; it is affecting everyone. The birth of ecocriticism as a reaction to the global environmental crisis has given the platform to rethink about human and nature relationship in literature. In its early development, ecocriticism only paid particular interest in Romantic poetry to see how the earth is perceived. This shows how earth is finally given a place in the literary study. The earth functions not merely as the setting for literary works, but also as the important character in works of literature. Unlike in the early days of ecocriticism development, nature writing these days is not only dominated by the
Western i.e. Romantic poetry. The awareness of environmental crisis being a global threat has invited writers from different background to voice their take on the crisis through their writings. This includes writers from Asia or Africa; the writers who are from within the English studies are seen as the Third World writers.
Amitav Ghosh is one of the writers who includes environmental concern in his works. One of the works of this Indian writer that has ecological concern in it is Sea of Poppies (2008). Ghosh‘s novels are usually rich in history, considering the author‘s roots in journalism and academic writing.1 Sea of Poppies takes the nineteenth-century opium poppy cultivation as the settings. The diversity of characters in this novel mirrors the time of British colonialism time in India. It
1 John C. Hawley, Contemporary Indian Writers in English: Amitav Ghosh (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd., 2005), 1.
2
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
also captures the colonial history of the East by the West. This novel is divided into three parts; ‗Land‘, ‗River‘, and ‗Sea‘, showing the natural setting shown in the novel.
Sea of Poppies portrays human‘s abusive treatment to nature as the root of environmental crisis which has become the concern of green literature. In the novel, there is an obvious hierarchy that placed human as superior compared to the non-human nature. Ghosh uses the opium cultivation in India as the setting to help the reader see how nature is exploited for the benefit of British government‘s opium trade with China.
Sea of Poppies tells us a story of different people of different background during British colonialism in India. There is Deeti, a woman from northern Bihar.
Deeti is peasant who makes a living from the cultivation of opium poppy. She is married to a former sepoy2 who is also an afeemkhor3, named Hukam Singh.
Hukam Singh works in the Ghazipur Opium Factory, which is the biggest opium factory in India operated under British East India Company. On his day to day routine of going to work, Hukam Singh is transported to Ghazipur by a man from the untouchable caste, named Kalua.
In the beginning of the novel, Deeti is given a ‗sight‘ by the Ganga River about the Ibis, a ship that will change her life forever. It is also the very same day when Ibis first make its way into the Ganga after its eleven months journey from
Baltimore. On board of this ship, there is Zachary Reid—who is a son of a slave
2 Indian soldier 3 Opium addict
3
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
from Baltimore with her white master, and a group of lascars led by Serang Ali.
The Ibis is brought to India to serve its new master—Benjamin Burnham of
Burnham Bros, as an opium carrying vessel.
Later on, Deeti, who is occupied with the lateness of her poppy crop, receives a message that her husband passed out during his job in the factory. With the help of Kalua, Deeti and her daughter Kabutri make their way to the town of
Ghazipur in Kalua‘s oxcart. On the way to the factory, Deeti cannot help but notice how the other peasants appear to have the same problems as her. The harvest for poppy sap is unusually late for them that season. Deeti notices how this has caused the more people to suffer because they barely have anything on their dinner table to feed their family. The road to the factory is filled not only by people trying to earn money; it is also taken over by the contaminated air. The factory has created such an unhealthy environment in its surroundings. As she proceeds to the factory, Deeti notices how inhumane the working condition in the factory is.
Deeti soon finds herself in a difficult situation when her husband died.
Deeti parts with her only child Kabutri when her husband‘s family forces her to die as a sati. On the day of her husband‘s funeral, Deeti is rescued by Kalua. On their escape, Deeti and Kalua then decide to run away together to a place unknown by any of their family to start a life together. This is how they both sign up to be indentured labors to be sent to Mauritius. Soon on the board of the ship to
Mauritius, Deeti and Kalua acquaint themselves with different people from different background.
4
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
The one who also on the run, Paulette Lambert; she is a French orphan from a long line of family of botanists. Paulette decides to leave Benjamin
Burnham and his family who take care of her after the death of her father.
Paulette‘s escape is motivated by Mr. Burnham‘s offensive acts towards her and the prospect of marrying a man from Calcutta‘s white society for the so called good ‗status‘. Her fluency in speaking in Hindi makes her undetectable when she gets on the board of Ibis disguising as an indigenous woman. One of the closest people to Paulette on the ship is Jodu, a native who signs himself up as a lascar.
Paulette and Jodu grows up together inseparably like siblings. Since the death of her mother, Jodu‘s late mother took Paulette into her care as her own daughter.
Driven by a really different circumstance with the other migrants to-be, there is Neel Rattan Halder. Born ‗royalty‘, Neel Halder is a man from a respected high caste in Indian society. Neel Halder is to be transported as a convict to
Mauritius, to serve his seven years sentence in British jail in Mauritius. Neel
Halder is arrested by British authority because of debt problem with Benjamin
Burnham. Neel Halder is not the only convict to be transported to Mauritius. He soon finds himself learns to be in the company of a half Chinese opium addict named Ah Fatt.
Despite of the differences in their past lives, these people are brought together in the same ship with the same fate waits for them. These characters get along together with the ship and the status of being immigrants bound them together. They face their new life of being ship siblings, anticipating of what life
5
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
is going to be after leaving their homeland in a journey of uncertainty. This theme of journey on the ship marks an important event of Indian diaspora.
Sea of Poppies provides a significant example of the history of Indian diaspora to all over the places in the world. Indian migrants, during this colonial time, were being sent to various places under British colony to be labored as slaves in British‘s plantations. In Sea of Poppies, for example, we witness how the characters are on board of the journey to be transported to Mauritius, where
British plantations have waited for them to serve as coolies.
Other than migration as a reason of Indian diaspora, Sea of Poppies also highlights some of the most important history of British colonial in India. One of them is the imposition of opium cultivation of opium poppy upon the native peasants. With British having an exclusive monopoly on India‘s opium production, the new cultivation system is forced to the farmers in India. The colony forces the cultivation of the cash crop poppy to gain as much profit as possible. This causes the oppression on the locals and their land. The practice of poppy monoculture has caused a serious damage to India‘s ecosystem, and its people‘s lives too.
In Ghosh‘s works, theme related to colonialism or the environment is often found. He has written several works of fiction, they are: The Circle of Reason
(1986), The Shadow Lines (1988), The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), The Glass
Palace (2000), The Hungry Tide (2004), Sea Of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke
(2011), and Flood of Fire (2015). His famous works of non-fiction includes In an
Antique Land (2002), The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the
6
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Unthinkable (2016), and some more other. For instance, the novel The Glass
Palace talks about British invasion to Burma. There is also The Hungry Tide, which is said to be the novel which speaks the most about the environment—it revolves around the river dolphin and Bengal tiger preservation issue.
As previously mentioned, Sea of Poppies reflects Ghosh‘s take in environmental concern as well. In Sea of Poppies, Ghosh uses Bengal as one of the setting of the story. Ghosh was born in Bengal, an area which he described as
―a vast delta where thousands of creeks and rivers flow into each other to from a landscape that is mapped upon a grid of interlocking waterways. It is a landscape of ambiguity where there are no clear lines between river and sea, earth and water, island and mainland.‖4
Natural landscape plays an important part in Ghosh‘s writings. The portrayal of Bengal‘s natural landscape appears not only in his fictions, but it also appears in his non-fiction writings. In 2004, Ghosh published an essay on his concern about the plan of the development of the tourism complex in Sundarbans,
West Bengal. ―Folly in the Sundarbans‖ notes Ghosh‘s view on the Sahara India
Pariwar‘s project of hotels and cottages in Sundarbans that costs almost 115 million US dollars.5 Through his essay, Ghosh shows his concern to the Bengal‘s nature. His essay shows that the development of tourism complex in Bengal will cause an enormous damage on the nature. In fact, it may even be disastrous. For
4 Amitav Ghosh, ―Confluence and Crossroads: Europe and the Fate of the Earth,‖ Accessed 29 Nov 2016.
7
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
instance, in the essay, he mentions that the construction of a floating hotel will result to a huge quantity of sewage and waste into the surrounding waters. This will cause serious threats to the populations of crabs and fish that live in the water.
His novel The Hungry Tide is also set in Bengal. Sea of Poppies, then, will be another example of Ghosh‘s take of Bengal‘s natural ecosystem through fiction writing.
As previously mentioned, the setting of the Opium War is important in this writing because it shows how India‘s nature is exploited for the sake of the opium trade. Initially in the 1880s, opium in India was planted in small plots of land. The cultivation of opium poppy was meant to produce high quality latex and morphine as an average content in Indian drugs.6 Sea of Poppies gives an image of how the cultivation of opium poppy develops under British East India Company. Through a close reading of his works, Ghosh‘s take about this event in Indian history should be revealed.
B. Problem Formulation
British‘s colonization in India marked the exploitation of India‘s land and its people. The arrival of colonial settlers in the middle of India‘s native society has brought changes, not only to Indian indigenous society but also to the fertile land of India. Ghosh appears to show a strong voice about the issue of
6 Arieh Levy and Judith Milo, ―Genetics and Breeding of Papaver somniferum‖ in Poppy: The Genus Papaver, ed. Jenõ Bernáth (Amsterdam: OPA, 1998), 97.
8
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
monoculture poppy cultivation that has transformed Indian‘s nature and society not for the better, but for the worse.
Ghosh crafts Sea of Poppies to be the reflection of human‘s abuse to its non-human counterpart—the nature. Through this novel, Ghosh brings human and nature relationship in the dialogue of history of colonization. Being trapped under the torture of the exploitation of nature and colonial exploitation, the indigenous land and people of India are forced to face the injustice under British ruthless treatment upon them. In search of a possible positive alternative on the colonizer‘s exploitative act, resistance is the only possible option. Seeing the issues portrayed in Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies, the following questions are raised:
1. How does colonization affect nature and indigenous people in Amitav
Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies?
2. How does Amitav Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies portray resistance as a means to
discover environmental and social justice?
The theoretical framework that is used to help the problems raised in this thesis is postolonial ecocriticism. The focus of the theory used is those which are related to the dialogue of the nature in the colonial or postcolonial settings, the effects of colonization to human and nature relationship, and about the resistance that relates to achieving environmental and social justice.
C. Significance of the Study
This study is conducted in hope that readers can have a particular perspective in reading Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies, especially concerning in the discussion of the nature. With Asian readers, Indonesian in particular, this study
9
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
may offer an insight on how Asian literature contributes to the talk of postcolonial ecocriticism especially on the similarity of history of how colonialism became a justification for the colonizer to exploit the indigenous land. This study is also hoped to be beneficial in the middle of the talk about environmental and social justice, which usually goes together in the dialogue of environmental crisis and the effort to raise awareness about it.
D. Chapters Outline
The first chapter of this thesis includes the background of the study, research questions, the significance of the study, and the scope of the study. The second chapter presents the literature review in which the previous studies on
Ghosh‘s works are being discussed, followed by the theoretical framework used in the study. The theoretical framework is divided into three different parts. The first part talks about the dialogue of ecocriticism and postcolonialism. The second part talks about human and nature relationship in the middle of colonial setting.
Finally, the third part talks about resistance with its relation to achieve environmental and social justice. The next two chapters, the third and the forth chapter, present the answer to the research questions, respectively. Each question is worth one chapter of discussion. Therefore, the third chapter discusses how colonialism effect on the nature and people is reflected in Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies.
The fourth chapter discusses how the resistance is reflected in Ghosh‘s Sea of
Poppies as a way to discover environmental and social justice. The findings in chapter three and four are concluded in chapter five. The final part of this thesis is bibliography.
10
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
The previous chapter has explained that this thesis discusses Ghosh‘s work entitled Sea of Poppies through the perspective of postcolonial ecocriticism. This chapter presents review of related studies which focuses on how Ghosh‘s works have been studied before, and the review of related theory that is used to help to answer the problems raised in the previous chapter.
A. Review of Related Studies
This section discusses several previous studies on Amitav Ghosh‘s works.
Several articles discussing Ghosh‘s works are reviewed to see the existing debates within the works of Ghosh. By reviewing the existing studies, this thesis should be able to find its place within the discussion of Ghosh and his works.
The first article is by Nazia Hasan which focuses on Ghosh‘s work entitled
The Glass Palace. Hasan suggested that this works offer the theme of the environment and its protection. The attention is particularly given to the depiction of South East Asia‘s wilderness exploitation in the mid-nineteenth century because of the march of colonization.7
7 Nazia Hasan, ―Tracing the Strong Green Streaks in the Novels of Amitav Ghosh: An Eco- critical Reading.‖ Indian Literature, 57.1 (2013): 182. Web. 10 Jan 2017.
11
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
This novel shows how colonization becomes a way to dominate indentured laborers from Malay and Tamil and also the magnificent natural resources from
Burma‘s land. The Glass Palace shows how the earth and the human laborers are treated as money-making machines. As an effect from how the nature is abused, nature fights back by becoming barren. The example in this book is shown by how the rubber trees, do not respond to either manure or fertilizers.8 Hasan adds that the sudden arrival of the ―enlightened‖ British colony, who claims to be educated, has drained Burmese nature for one single purpose, which is money.9
Through The Glass Palace, Ghosh seems to highlight the effect of colonialism in
Burma to the locals and their nature. Both the locals and the nature are being treated as money-making machines to serve the needs of the colony. The exploitation of Burma‘s locals, the indentured laborers from Malay and Tamil, and also Burma‘s nature is justified through colonization.
The colony in Burma, as seen in The Glass Palace, appears not only interested in Burma‘s rubber trees, but also its oil. The novel shows how the foreigners, consisting of white men from France, England and America take over the oil wells in Burma and leave the ecosystem around it damaged. Hasan highlights this issue as Ghosh‘s critics on human‘s cruelty over the nature for the sake of their personal gain, or to fulfill their insatiable greed.10 It speaks to the idea that man‘s selfishness has robbed the nature and its resources without
8 N. Hasan, p.183 9 N. Hasan, p.184 10 N. Hasan, p.188
12
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
considering about the nature‘s sustainability. The novel seems to be a critique on how human completely take the nature for granted, even damaging it to gain as much profit as possible.
Additionally, Hasan mentions Ghosh‘s other works to show the author‘s concern on the ecology. One of them is The Hungry Tide which is claimed to contain a strong ecological theme. In The Hungry Tide, Ghosh shows the relationship between the environment and humanity as he speaks for the Bengal tiger population and the life of the Sunderbans refugees. The Hungry Tide takes
Ghosh‘s perspective on the conservation of the Bengal tigers that costs the life of these poor refuges. Ghosh insists that as much as it is necessary for the international conservation projects or organizations to focus on the animal preservation, it is important to remember that there are poor local settlers whose lives are also important. Both human and animal can coexist in a balanced relationship.11 The Hungry Tide shows that Ghosh also concerns on the animals as the part of the ecosystem. The sustainability of earth‘s natural ecosystem depends on how human and the non-human lives together.
Other work that is also reviewed by Hasan that contains an ecological perspective is River of Smoke. Hasan lists several themes related to the ecology that can be found in River of Smoke, including the role of nature in human‘s everyday life. It emphasizes on how humanity relies a lot on the nature and its
11 N. Hasan, p.185
13
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
resources. Those resources are, in fact, blessings that are bestowed upon human.12
Hasan‘s view on Ghosh‘s novels suggests that Ghosh‘s writings show strong concern on the ecology. It appears that Ghosh uses his works to remind the readers about the serious consequences of human abusing the nature. Also, speaking on the behalf of the non-human, Ghosh stresses on the importance on having a more positive and non-oppressive relationship between human and its non-human counterpart.
Hasan‘s article contributes in helping to see how Ghosh‘s presents the issue of ecology and its protection in his novels. Considering that human and nature‘s relationship is the basic of any green reading, Hasan‘s opinion on
Ghosh‘s The Glass Palace and his commentary on Ghosh‘s other novels needs to be taken into account. Hasan gives an insight of Ghosh‘s position in the debate of the importance of protecting the nature. This thesis, too, aims to give a layer in this discussion. The conversation of how human and nature relate to each other in
Sea of Poppies with the setting of opium poppy cultivation in colonial India should reveal Ghosh‘s view on the nature, its problems, and its protection. More specifically, Hasan‘s article supports this thesis‘ take on how the colonized land,
India, is taken for granted for the colonizer‘s need. Hasan‘s article also supports the fact how the colonialism has scarred the colonized land without considering its sustainability. Including Hasan‘s perspective in the reading of Sea of Poppies
12 N. Hasan, p.190
14
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
should help to see how Ghosh suggests the importance of human to have a non- oppressive relationship, especially with the nature.
Ghosh‘s writings seem to have a connection with today‘s happenings.
Hasan mentions briefly in the article of how Ghosh‘s The Glass Palace hints to the today‘s Oil imperialism. The work itself is a critic on human‘s cruelty over the nature; how human colonize ―oil in Middle East, sugar, cotton, and silk in Africa or poppy and indigo in India.‖13 Furthermore, Kanika Batra claims on how
Ghosh‘s works, although they mostly tell about a particular event or history in the past, display present days concerns. Batra‘s reading on Ghosh‘s concerns on how the so-called space development has transformed the natural environment. Batra‘s perspective relies on the comparison between today‘s Ghuangzhou to nineteenth century Canton—the setting of Ghosh‘s River of Smoke.14 This reading mostly focuses on Canton/Ghuangzhou‘s urban ecosystem.
There is something worth noting from the article. Batra opposes the claim of the untouched landscape which came with the arrival of the Europeans in the eighteenth century Canton. The arrival of the Europeans in Canton caused many of the citizens, those of the poor people, to lose their living space because of the transformation of the agricultural space into residential area.15 Batra also mentions
13 N. Hasan, p.188 14 Kanika Batra, ―City Botany: Reading Urban Ecologies in China through Amitav Ghosh‘s River of Smoke.‖ Narrative, 21.3 (2013): 323, 324. Web. 7 Sep 2017.
15
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
that Ghosh‘s River of Smoke may reveal only a little on the issue of environmental concern, but it still touches on the topic of people‘s relationship with their surrounding environment especially in the dialogue of land expropriation.16 The consequence of the transformation is none other than dispossession, how property or land owners are deprived of their rights for real estate development.
Batra may not touch much on the human and the non-human relationship, but the article reveals Ghosh‘s view related to space and the dispossessed. River of
Smoke reveals the discussion of the space in the environment, and it is important to see that there is a price to pay in the face of development. In this case, the many of the underprivileged, poor people in Canton are those who experience the dispossession. The idea of the untouched, pure landscape is presumably a justification for the Europeans to tame the land, recreating the space into their concept of the ideal urban ecology. Batra‘s article supports this thesis‘ take on how the so-called development brought by the colonization has caused the transformation of the natural environment. Including Batra‘s perspective in the reading of Sea of Poppies should help to see how India‘s natural environment is transformed for a rather different reason, which is opium cultivation.
The next article by S. Alexander and P. Saravanan gives a particular attention to Ghosh‘s The Hungry Tide. The novel is Ghosh‘s take on the matter of ecology and the threats faced by the ecosystem. Ghosh talks about human and nature relationship by strongly engaging the theme of ecology through his writing
16 K. Batra, p.326
16
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
and using it as a medium for science and humanity to meet. This article argues how Ghosh‘s The Hungry Tide reveals the fact how ecosystem conservation becomes a way for disguising human‘s political agenda. The conservation may have saved the life of the animals, but it has violently driven the settlers of the conservation area out of their locale.17 Almost similar to Batra, Ghosh also mentions about how certain underprivileged people experiencing dispossession.
Through The Hungry Tide, Ghosh brings the different layers of people and cultures that inhabited Sunderbans. Alexander and Saravanan focus on the issue related to the conservation of Sunderban‘s nature. Ghosh presents Sunderban‘s nature with its sandbars, mangrove, forests, rivers, creeks and channels.18 In the novel, Ghosh evaluates the First World‘s ecologist‘s obsession of the wilderness.
Ghosh emphasizes the importance of saving the animal as well as the common people that inhabited the land, in which both human and animal are equally as important in the talk of preserving the balance of the nature.19 Ghosh presents the importance of the balance in the environment, and aims to use the novel to raise the awareness of the natural changes that are caused by science and technology.
Ghosh brings out human and animal relationship in literature through the importance of a balanced human and animal relationship on earth within an
17 S. Alexander and P. Saravanan, ―The Quintessence of Ecology in Amitav Ghosh‘s The Hungry Tide.‖ Literary Quest, 1.11 (2015): 60. Web. 10 Jan 2017.
17
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
endangered ecosystem.20 It appears that Alexander and Saravanan‘s reading on
The Hungry Tide also concludes in the essential idea of balance in the nature.
Alexander and Saravanan seems to correspond with Batra, both studies represent how Ghosh perceives the obsession of the untouched nature, or the wilderness. Ghosh seems to be against the idea of a pure, untouched ecosystem by challenging it the in the context of urban development or conservation program.
Furthermore, similar to Hasan, Alexander and Saravanan‘s study seems to urge on the importance of human and nature‘s coexistence. These studies on Ghosh which revolve in the theme of ecology may be involved to support the reading of nature in Sea of Poppies. From these different studies, it can be seen how Ghosh serves various topics in reading the ecology; be it about the dispossessed, human‘s superiority on the nature, and more. Alexander and Saravanan‘s study support this thesis‘ take on the idea of a balanced nature which depends on human and nature‘s coexistence. These different perspectives within the theme of ecology in the works of Ghosh are to be considered in my reading of Sea of Poppies, especially to support the findings.
Ghosh does not only concern on the theme of ecology in his writing. One of the themes that appears in Sea of Poppies is diaspora. Another article, by
Rudrani Gangopadhyay, focuses on the issue of indentured immigration as the cause of the Indian diaspora spreading all over the world. Gangopadhyay highlights two important events of history in the novel, which are: the opium trade
20 S. Alexander and P. Saravanan, p.66
18
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
and the transport of Indian immigrants to British plantation in Mauritius, Fiji, or
Trinidad. The theme of journey through immigration makes a comeback in Sea of
Poppies after Ghosh‘s previous novel The Circle of Reason, The Glass Palace, and The Hungry Tide. The theme of journey is also usually used by Ghosh to talk about the theme of colonial history in most of his works.21
Gangopadhyay gives attention to all of the characters in Sea of Poppies and looks at their reason to pursue a journey on board of the Ibis. These people altogether experience diaspora and create their own history though their various social and cultural backgrounds.22 This reminds of how people on the Ibis speak variety of languages because they come from different social and cultural background.
Languages spoken on board of the Ibis are various, including Bhojpuri,
Bengali, Laskari, Hindusthani, and English. The languages barriers are solved by the birth of the hybrid language as the consequence of having different languages spoken in a single place. The hybridization does not only happen to the language on board, but also happens to the culture as a result or the characteristic of diaspora.23 Gangopadhyay compares Sea of Poppies to Rushdie‘s Midnight
Children to explain diversity of language used by Ghosh‘s characters in the novel, making it one of the special features of the novel itself. Gangopadhyay also
21 Rudrani Gangopadhyay, ―Finding Oneself On Board the Ibis in Amitav Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies.‖ Woman Studies Quarterly, 42.1&2 (2017): 56-57. Web. 21 Jul 2017.
19
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
focuses on the phrases used in the narrative. Unlike Rushdie who chooses consistency of English in the writing, Ghosh blends different languages into his writing to show the divisions of his characters‘ backgrounds.24 However, this division of background and languages soon proves to unite the different characters, tying them together in the context of diaspora.
The study concludes how the shared experiences between different people through diaspora results in the possibility of language, music, and culture hybridity. In Sea of Poppies, people of different race and social class come together on board of the ship for different reasons. Through the journey on the
Ibis, Gangopadhyay notes how Ghosh‘s characters are able to find their voice and recreate their history in the context of migration and diaspora.25 The hybridity of language, music, and culture is an important characteristic in talking about diaspora phenomenon.
In line with the theme of diaspora, a study by Nandini C. Sen also focuses on how diaspora becomes a motive that dominates Sea of Poppies. Sen notes that diasporic phenomenon is one of Ghosh‘s favorite motives in his writings. For instance, Ghosh uses it in his previous novel entitled The Shadow Lines where he talks about the issue of border crossing.26 As a matter of fact, border crossing also
24 R. Gangopadhyay, p.62 25 R. Gangopadhyay, p.63 26 Nandini C. Sen, ―The Creation of Diaspora and its Historical Significance: A Study of Amitav Ghosh‘s ‗Sea of Poppies‘.‖ Diaspora Studies, 5.2 (2012): 198. Web. 7 Sept 2017.
20
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
appears in Sea of Poppies, which is marked by the characters coming altogether into Ibis, the boat of pilgrims.
The study includes the talk of gender and diaspora in Sea of Poppies. Sen raises a question on the role of women in diaspora; whether they are empowered or victimized. By looking at characters like Paulette and Deeti, Sen concludes that women have significant role in Sea of Poppies. Deeti and Paulette, along with the other women like Ratna, Heeru and Sarju are depicted as brave women as they make the decision to leave their homeland. Paulette, especially, leaves her prominent status as a memsahib in Calcutta‘s white society.27 In the middle of displacement, Ghosh portrays women as people who are able to make life changing decision. This is considered impossible to be done in the middle of a patriarchal society. Here, women‘s role is empowered.
Sen also highlights how diaspora affected caste system in Sea of Poppies.
Caste system, or varnashram in India, is an important concept that is related to one‘s identity. In the context of diaspora, there is a tendency for the caste structure to collapse. Sen mentions one of the reasons why caste structure does not work in diaspora context is because ―caste group could not exist due the lack of local caste-based authorities‖. The other reason is because the immigrants are dominated by people of lower caste.28 By sailing on board of the pilgrim ship like
Ibis, immigrants who are portrayed by the characters in Sea of Poppies are freed from the caste system that controls their identity.
27 N. C. Sen, p.200 28 N. C. Sen, p.201
21
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Sea of Poppies reflects how Indian indentured workers being shipped to various European colonies to work in plantations. Indentured workers are called by the name ‗girmitiyas‘ which comes from the mispronounced of the word
‗permit‘ into ‗girmit‘ by non-English-speaking Indians. The contract for the indentured workers usually lasts for five years and it is renewable for another five years, with girmitiyas earning eight rupees per month.29 This is also what happens in Sea of Poppies. The immigrants boarding on the Ibis leave their homeland with no certainty of how much money will they make out of indentured labor, but they sure know that there is no fancy life waits for them across the sea.
Sen also adds one of the most important topics in the study of diaspora is the oral narrative. In the case of Indian diaspora, the immigrants may be illiterate, but they have a vast knowledge on popular songs, sayings and folklore. Sen shows how in Sea of Poppies, the immigrants uses their knowledge on songs, sayings and folklores not only as a connection to their old life in their homeland, but also as a foundation in creating their new culture.30 The immigrants who come from different background teach each other about their songs, sayings, and folklores.
This is relates to the hybridity of language as previously mentioned in
Gangopadhyay‘s study.
Both articles by Gangopadhyay and Sen focus on a similar theme, which is diaspora. These two articles approach diaspora from the motives of the journey to the birth of the hybrid languages as a result of shared experiences. The experience
29 N. C. Sen, p.203 30 N. C. Sen, p.204
22
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
of border crossing is something familiar to postcolonial study. Seeing diaspora becomes one of the main themes in Sea of Poppies, it is safe to say that Ghosh also pays a special attention into the theme of border crossing. These studies by
Gangopadhyay and Sen provide some insight about the experience of the journey and how it affects the people—their languages, castes, roles, etc. In this thesis‘ later chapter, a particular attention is also given to the experience of border crossing. More specifically, the attention is given to migration, more specifically the phenomenon of crossing the Black Water. Sea of Poppies presents us a fact that a journey beyond the Black Water is actually unimaginable for some of the characters, since it is forbidden by their religion. However, as the migrants find themselves on board of the Ibis, there is another sense of discovery that goes beyond the discovery of hybrid language. To some, however, it represents resistance and the discovery of justice. Both studies by Gangopadhyay and Sen support this thesis‘ take on the diaspora phenomenon. Sen‘s study in particular supports how the rapid change in caste structure influences the life of the characters in Sea of Poppies. The theme of diaspora in the novel works as the way how caste or social structure is challenged in search of justice.
To add after the discussions of ecology and diaspora, another different point of view also fills in the studies of Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies. In an article about Sea of Poppies by Ravi Ahuja, there is a prominent discussion of hierarchy studied from the point of view of Indian lascars. Ahuja puts special interest in
Jodu, one of the characters in Sea of Poppies, to show the experience of the seamen in the nineteenth century sailing ship. Ahuja highlights how the term
23
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
―lascar‖ which originated from the Persian word ―lashkar‖ has its meaning shifted because of colonialism. Originally, ―lashkar‖ means ―an armed formation‖ or more generally refers to ―men under military command‖. However, colonialism has shifted the term ―lascar‖ into a racial category that distinguishes Indian seamen to European ones. The shift of meaning of the word ―lascar‖ is similar to what happened to the word ―coolie‖ that means ―workers‖, in which it is shifted into a racial category that separates ―Asians‖ to ―whites‖.31 The separation of racial categories between Indian and European ship crews indicates the existence of racial hierarchy in the deck, where the status of the non-European seamen serves as the inferior compared to the European ones.
In the article, Ahuja compares Ghosh‘s fictional character with the actual lascar of British Steam Navigation Company‘s SS Gandhara in the 1930, named
Sona Miah. He argues that the fictional character Jodu, and Sona Miah of SS
Gandhara are both identified as lascars. Both Jodu and Sona Miah are of those lascars who become the victims of oppression by the European seamen they working with. The oppression comes in the form of inhumane working and living condition on the ship. The oppression, too, was the cause of high frequency of lascar suicides in the 1900s.32 By comparing Ghosh‘s fictional character and Sona
Miah, Ahuja aims to show how both lascars are no different than prisoners being confined in the ship. Ahuja adds, even though Ghosh does not explore more on
31 Ravi Ahuja, ―Capital at Sea, Shaitan Below Decks? A Note on Global Narratives, Narrow Spaces, and the Limits of Experience.‖ History of the Present, 2.1 (2012): 78. Web. 18 Oct 2016.
24
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
the painful experience of the lascars confinement, Ghosh still shows how the lascars are treated unfairly under the ship‘s racial hierarchy. One of the examples
Ahuja takes from the novel is when Jodu is threatened to be killed by the crew for defying a British mate.33 This adds to another perspective on reading Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies. Being a lascar is used as a racial category that justifies the oppression of characters like Jodu as a weaker subject in the dialogue of European seamen versus Asian lascars.
The next article by K.M. Chandar also mentions his take on the issue of hierarchy. While Ahuja sets Jodu as his main focus, Chandar sets his in Neel
Halder. Chandar mentions how in most of Ghosh‘s novels, he repeatedly uses the theme of voyage on the sea of the river as the main theme.
Ghosh‘s writings are characterized with the appearance of sub-texts that mark different time and space, but are connected through a similar theme of journey. In addition, Ghosh provides his writing with rich history and cultural anthropology, which is considered as the strength in his writings.34 To Chandar,
Sea of Poppies is considered as the most ambitious novel by Ghosh. If Ghosh‘s previous novels like In An Antique Land and The Glass Palace use two subtexts, in the Sea of Poppies, Ghosh creates and joins up to four deliberate subtexts.
33 R. Ahuja, p.81 34 K.M. Chandar, ―Journey to the Antique Land of Poppies: Voyage as Discovery in Amitav Ghosh‘s ―Sea of Poppies‖.‖ Indian Literature, 54.4 (2010): 181. Web. 18 Oct 2016.
25
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
These four subtexts are all linked with another bounding themes; the poppy, specifically South Asia to China poppy trade as the main theme.35
Chandar particularly focuses on one of the sub-texts in the novel that tells the story about the land-owning Raja, Neel Halder. Neel Halder is a character who represents one of the landlords who are tied to the East India Company. In the early years of its establishment, the East India Company‘s major resources came from the Bengal opium trade route. In the novel, Ghosh shows how the landlords are connected into East India Company and the opium trade for the sake of financial gain.36 However, good luck does not always stay in the Raja‘s side.
British representative arrests him under the accusation of forgery. Neel Halder is sentenced seven years of imprisonment in British prison in Mauritius. Neel Halder is forced to leave his glamorous life as a land-owning king to live as a prisoner.
Chandar highlights how Ghosh shows the drastic changes in Neel Halder‘s life as the landowner is prepared to enter the prison. There is a display of British prison system when Neel Halder is examined and marked as a prisoner. It includes physical abuse and humiliation.37 The forms of this physical abuse and humiliation are: being brutally stripped of one‘s clothes, being called by such filthy names, one‘s body being marked by tattoo, etc.
On being transported to the Mauritius through a voyage, Neel Halder finds himself discover a tender human relationship between him and a fellow convict,
35 K.M. Chandar, p.181 36 K.M. Chandar, p.183 37 K.M. Chandar, p.185
26
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Ahfatt. Neel Halder grows extremely close to this half-Chinese opium addict. The guards in the prison, in fact, have tried everything to break the bond between the two, but it only grows even stronger. Later in the novel, the relationship between
Neel Halder and Ahfatt are being put to the test again by the Second-in-Command in Ibis ship. It is marked as the peak of Neel Halder‘s humiliation when both he and Ahfatt are being told to urinate on one another for the Captain‘s entertainment. 38 However, Neel Halder and Ahfatt possess such strong relationship. The effort to mess with these two different people of two different social statuses is useless. Since both characters have become criminals according to the British law, they both arrive in the situation where their identity and social status is no longer significant.
The shift of one‘s identity and social status is one of the themes offered by
Ghosh through Sea of Poppies. The sub-texts in the novel overlap and create a unique story of journey, identity, and hierarchy. Chandar‘s article presents an interesting reading on Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies. It focuses mainly on one character,
Neel Halder. It presents how Neel Halder being one of the examples of the character whose life undergoes an overturn because of the caste stripping.
Hierarchy and identity are two inseparable themes which also appear in
Sea of Poppies. Chandar and Ahuja‘s perspectives provide an additional insight about some of the characters. However, there is diversity on the discussion of identity of the characters in the novel, especially when it is combined with the
38 K.M. Chandar, p.188
27
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
additional dialogue of colonial setting. Even so, these studies have shown how
Ghosh contrasts the relationship between the privileged and the underprivileged.
Previously, in the conversation of ecology in Ghosh‘s writing, human‘s oppressive tendency over the nature is revealed. It appears that in the context of one human to another, there is also a tendency of oppressing the weaker ones. The involvement of power play between one person and another, combined with how it related to human and nature relationship, is to be the stepping stone on the reading of Sea of Poppies. The studies by Chandar and Ahuja are used to support this thesis‘ take on how racial and social status differences are used to oppress the weaker or the marginalized. It appears that Ghosh wants to challenge the oppression towards the weak because of differences in race and social status through Sea of Poppies.
By looking at the previous studies conducted on Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies, it can be concluded that the studies are somehow still focus on the hierarchy of the different social classes in the novel and also diaspora, and the ‗green‘ reading revolves human‘s superiority over the nature. The existing studies are used to support this thesis‘ findings. This thesis offers a different take on reading Ghosh‘s work. Sea of Poppies will be seen from the point of view of postcolonial ecocriticism with a particular focus on looking at human and non-human relationship with the particular focus on the colonial setting, more specifically on how human and the non-human relationship is situated within the context of caste- based Indian society and within the setting of colonialism. This thesis also offers to see how migration is seen as a form of resistance in search of environmental of
28
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
social justice, as well as seeing to what extent justice is achieved through the resistance effort.
B. Review of Related Theory
Several studies on Ghosh‘s novel that has been conducted by the other researchers have been discussed in the previous section in order to find an available space to be filled by this thesis. This section focuses on the theory that is used in analyzing the novel to answer the research questions. This section is divided into three parts. The need of bringing together the issue of postcolonialism and ecocriticism is to be explored first. The following part is to talk about the relationship of human and nature in postcolonial context. The topic of resistance, environmental justice, and social justice altogether in the context of postcolonial ecocriticism is to be explored in the final part.
1. On Bringing Together Postcolonialism and Ecocriticism
In bringing together both ecocriticism and postcolonialism, it is important to see how both disciplines are related and influenced one another. In literary studies over the last decades, postcolonialism has occupied an important part in literary studies. Ecocriticism also has become more popular due to the rising of global environmental awareness. However, in the beginning of its development, ecocriticism barely engaged the dialogue of postcolonialism in its investigation.
In the Introduction to The Ecocriticism Reader, Cheryl Glotfelty mentions that ecocriticism appeared because of the ignorance of today‘s most important
29
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
issue, namely the global environmental crisis.39 Glotfelty states that major publications in literature until the twentieth century have been focusing on the issue of class, race, and gender, but none on the earth. Literary publications barely reflected that the earth‘s life support is under pressure and in need of human‘s attention.40 The earth is in the face of serious threats and it calls for everyone‘s attention, including the participation from literary study.
The recent happenings related to the earth and its problems have put a pressure on the literary study to give a response. Glotfelty also mentions that prior to the publication of The Ecocriticism Reader, still, ―there have been no journals, no jargon, no jobs, no professional societies or discussion groups, and no conferences on literature and the environment‖. Meanwhile, other disciplines in humanities like history, philosophy, law, sociology, and religion have shown their concern on the environment.41 However, several studies focusing on the environment and its issues has appeared under different names, such as:
―American studies, regionalism, pastoralism, the frontier, human ecology, science and literature, nature in literature, landscape in literature, etc.‖42 These studies aims to create an environmental-based approach to literature, even though mostly still focus on the issue of wilderness. This shows that, even though appearing in
39 Cheryll Glotfelty, Introduction to The Ecocriticism Reader, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), xv. 40 C. Glotfelty, p.xvi 41 C. Glotfelty, p.xvi 42 C. Glotfelty, p.xvii
30
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
different names, literature studies has shown its concern to also ‗go green‘ and follow the steps of the other disciplines in humanities.
Somewhere by mid-eighties to early nineties, ecocriticism was born. By
Glotfelty it is simply defined as ―the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment,‖ it takes earth as the center of its approach, similar to how feminism and Marxism take gender issue and economic class as their focuses, respectively.43 The most typical questions raised by ecocritics and ecocricitism theorists, as noted by Glotfelty, involve around the representation of nature, the role of the physical setting, ecological wisdom voiced in the literature, humankind and natural world‘s relationship, changes in wilderness, etc.44 It appears that ecocriticism becomes a line that connects human, literature, and the actual physical world, or the nature.
Ecocriticism fundamentally believes that human culture and their physical world are connected. Both human culture and the physical world affect one another. The notion of the ‗world‘ in ecocriticism is expanded into the real ecosphere, which differentiate this literary theory with the other theories in examining the relationship between the writer, the text, and the world.45 To add,
Greg Garrard simply mentions that the widest way to describe ecocriticism is the
43 C. Glotfelty, p.xviii 44 C. Glotfelty, p.xix 45 C. Glotfelty, p.xvi
31
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
way it studies ―the relationship of the human and non-human, throughout human cultural history and entailing critical analysis in of the term ‗human‘ itself.‖46
However, in the middle of its booming, Rob Nixon notices how ecocriticism, as a representation of literature and environmental studies, only revolves around the works of American critics. These critics, according to Nixon, appear to have the same tendency. To quote Nixon:
Yet these authors tended to canonize the same self-selecting genealogy of American writers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, Terry Tempest Williams, Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder.47 Nixon mentions how he appreciates these big names as people of influence, however he regrets the fact that ecocriticism only speaks from within a single nation. He also adds on how there is a similarity of dominating pattern even in
―environmental literary anthologies, college course web sites, and special journal issues on ecocriticism.‖48 Ecocriticism seems to develop as an exclusive branch of
American studies, including the names of prominent American authors.
Nixon‘s sentiment is confirmed by Garrard who mentions that in its early development, ecocriticism exclusively paid its attention to Romantic poetry, wilderness narrative and nature writing. Only in the following years of its development, ecocriticism then expanded its focus. Garrard mentions that after the last few years of its emergence, then ASLE turned ecocriticism‘s object of study
46 Greg Garrard, Ecocriticism (New York: Routledge, 2004), 5. 47 Rob Nixon, ―Environmentalism and Postcolonialism‖ in Ecocriticism: The Essential Reader, ed. Ken Hiltner (New York: Routledge, 2015), 196. 48 R. Nixon, p.196
32
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
into a more general ones, including studies of popular scientific writing, film, TV, art, architecture and other cultural artefacts such as theme parks, zoos and shopping malls.49 Ecocriticism seems to have a specific interest especially in the idea of wilderness, before it expanded its reach into a more familiar object of study.
Glotfelty, too, states that the canon texts for environmental literary criticism include books like Aldo Leopold‘s A Sand Country Almanac, and
Edward Abbey‘s Desert Solitaire. This fact strengthens the idea that ecocriticism itself ―has been predominantly a white movement‖.50 However, Glotfelty adds a hopeful future for ecocriticism, in which it will be able to move across its boundaries of American literature. This means, ecocriticism will open itself to be a ―multi-ethnic movement when stronger connections are made between the environment and issues of social justice, and when a diversity of voices are encouraged to contribute to the discussion‖.51 This possibility of opening the field of ecocriticism to diverse range of voices shows a possible space for fields like postcolonialism to enter into dialogue with ecocriticism.
In line with ecocriticism‘s ambition of wanting to include diverse voices into the field, and the sentiment of the field being too American-centered, Nixon brings the case of Nigerian writer and activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa to highlight his arguments. It bothers Nixon how writers like Saro-Wiwa, who clearly revealed
49 G. Garrard, p.4 50 C. Glotfelty, p.xxv 51 C. Glotfelty, p.xxv
33
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
the struggle for social and environmental justice, does not have a place in the middle of the so-called canon for ecocriticism. Someone like Saro-Wiwa, would find his works being criticized under the scope of African writer whose work is more suitable to be analyzed from the perspective of postcolonialism instead of ecocriticism.52 To this dilemma, then, Nixon declares it is possible to bring together the issue of ecocriticism and postcolonialism.
Seeing the concern of both theories on a quick glance, ecocriticism and postcolonialism happen to oppose one another. Most environmentalists happen to be silent when it comes to postcolonial theory and literature, and vice versa.
Postcolonial critics happen to be just as silent when it comes to environmental literature.53 This shows how both fields appear to be mutually silent of each other‘s concerns. In bringing together both fields, Graham Huggan and Helen
Tiffin also add that the other problem lies on the difficulty of the definition of both fields. Huggan and Tiffin seem to support Nixon by declaring that both postcolonialism and ecocriticism are ―notoriously difficult to define‖.54
Therefore, owning no place in neither of the field, it is no surprise that cases like
Saro-Wiwa become an anomaly.
For instance, postcolonial critic‘s commitment to the issue of hybridity does not seem to match ecocritic‘s preservation of purity—the idea of the virgin
52 R. Nixon, p.197 53 R. Nixon, p.196 54 Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin, Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment. (New York: Routledge, 2010), 3.
34
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
wilderness and the ―uncorrupted‖ place.55 Nixon also adds that postcolonial critics are uncomfortable with the idea of purity. Environmental writing tends to remove the history of the colonized land through the image of the conquest of the empty land. This mostly appears in wilderness writings.56 Wilderness writings are, in fact, obsessed with the idea of seeing nature as a place that is pure, uncontaminated by human‘s civilization.57 The history of the colonized land becomes a problem when the conquest of the so-called wilderness has established the land and its native settlers as objects to be owned, preserved, or patronized.
The colonized are denied the ownership of their land and its legacies.58
Next, postcolonial critic‘s concern with displacement does not seem to match ecocritic‘s priority to place. Here, Nixon highlights the autobiographical differences between postcolonial critics and ecocritics. Postcolonial critics are those who happen to have crossed national boundaries through the experience of displacement. Meanwhile, Nixon notes that prominent writers and critics of environmentalism are ―mono-nationals with a deep-rooted experiential and imaginative commitment to a particular American locale.‖59 To place both fields together is problematic when ecocriticism suggests purity and returning home to nature as the solution of problems and crisis in the environment, while the idea of home, for postcolonialism and its displacement, is a place that is not locatable.
55 R. Nixon, p.197 56 R. Nixon, p.198 57 G. Garrard, p.59 58 R. Nixon, p.198 59 R. Nixon, p. 198
35
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Also, postcolonialism and its concern on the cosmopolitanism and transnationalism appear not to match ecocriticism‘s tendency of being a nationalistic field. Nixon points out how the texts that are considered as the canon in ecocriticism are developed within a national context, which is a national
American framework.60 The important question to be asked is, then, how to situate the context of ecocritic‘s particular national framework to go beyond its boundaries in order for it to be transnational. This, adds Nixon, demands ecocriticism to move beyond its idea of ‗place‘, and this requires ecocrticism to rethink about ‗place‘ within the dialogue of colonial and postcolonial—a nature of environmental also cultural degradation.61
Finally, postcolonialism pays a special attention to history, something which seems to be overlooked by ecocriticism. In talking about history, particularly, postcolonialism is specifically interested in reimagining the history of the marginalized, also history from the below and the border. In its pursuit of a timeless nature, however, Nixon recognizes how ecocriticism appears to discard the history. For example, in American natural history, the life of the colonized people is repressed because of the obsession to the myth of the empty lands.62
However, bringing together postcolonialism and ecocriticim is something that needs to be done. Integrating environmental issues into the discussion of
60 R. Nixon, p.197 61 R. Nixon, p.200 62 R. Nixon, p.197
36
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
postcolonial literatures and vice versa is a way to bridge both fields.63 The issue with the environment, in fact, is something everyone can relate to.
Environmentalism should not only be a Western luxury, and ecocriticism should not only be dominated by the white. Only by this way, then the voice of people like Saro-Wiwa and other postcolonial writers who have a say in environment issues can gain a place in the middle of the so-called ‗green‘ literature canon.64
By bringing together both postcolonialism and ecocriticism, it should answer to the ambition of ecocriticism to engage diversity of voice into its discussion. The consequence of this is the way we see how is this diversity of voice contributes in defining ecocriticism and its commitment to human and nature‘s relationship as a whole. It is important, then, to see how the relationship between human and nature in postcolonial or colonial context is, and how does it differ to the human and nature relationship we have come to see through mainstream ecocriticism.
2. On Human and Nature Relationship
As previously mentioned, the relationship between human and nature is the main focus of ecocriticism. Speaking in line with the concern of the environmental crisis, human and nature relationship become the attention of ecocriticism for it is the main reason of the crisis in the environment. From the perspective of ecocriticism, human and nature relationship becomes a problematic
63 R. Nixon, p.203 64 R. Nixon, p.204
37
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
one when the former appears to dominate the latter. This section will explore this notion, more particularly how it is discussed in the dialogue with colonialism.
In talking about human and nature relationship with its relation to ecological crisis, historian Lynn White, Jr. notes that the existing of ecological crisis is the result of human‘s culture, especially technology and science.
Technology and science, by White is characterized as being Occidental, it belongs to the Western. Western technology and science owe its success from the past sciences, for instance, the great Middle Age Islamic scientists and their discovery in fields like medicine, optics, mathematics, etc. It was through Latin translations of Arabic and Greek scientific works, the foundation of Western technology and science development was made possible.65 With consistency, the West continuously expands its technology and science in developing power machinery, labor-saving devices, and automation. The effort to develop the so-called modern technology, however, tends to ignore the fact that it treats the earth in a ruthless way.66
The way how human treats the land ruthlessly for the sake of developing the technology and science—for example through plowing, harvesting, chopping trees, butchering, etc.—has established an important separation between human and the nature itself. Human and nature are two different things, with the former
65 Lynn White, Jr., ―The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis‖ in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), 6. 66 L. White, p.8
38
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
being the master of the latter.67 Having the dominant power over the nature, anthropocentrism has become human‘s impulse to conquer, violate and exploit the nature. White mentions that Christianity‘s victory over paganism caused the greatest revolution in human‘s culture. Christianity has contributed in the creation of duality between human and the non-human. It also, according to White, insists in the notion that nature‘s exploitation for human‘s benefit is God‘s will.
Christianity has taken over pagan animism and changed the way nature is seen. It changed pagan animism beliefs that spirit exists in natural objects.68 White also adds that these days, however, science and technology has developed even further from Christian attitude of human and nature relationship. Human is seen to be nature‘s superior, and taking it for granted is considered natural.
White‘s argument is also supported by Christopher Manes who claims that the established human and nature relationship has caused nature to be silent.
Human is the only creature granted the monopoly of being the speaking subject.
Manes also highlights the culture of animism that contrasts the existing belief about human and nature relationship. The belief that the spirit that lives in the natural world, within the animals, plants, or stones, and river were replaced.69
According to Manes, the silence of the nature has opened a chance of exploitation
67 L. White, p.8 68 L. White, p.10 69 Christopher Manes, ―Nature and Silence‖ in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), 15.
39
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
by human. This ethic of exploitation has flourished and rooted among human.
Nature exploitation is, in fact, the reason of today‘s ecological crisis.
Human‘s relationship to nature has been said to be dominating. Human has been well known for taking the nature for granted and using the nature to serve whatever human need is. Technological superiority of the West also, then, encouraged them to take over the nature in small countries—to conquer and colonize these countries.70 Human and nature relationship, however, is formed rather differently in the colonial setting.
In introducing postcolonial ecocriticism and talking about nature and human, Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin begin by including the matter of racism and speciesism into the field‘s discussion. In the case of non-human; animals, for instance, the separation between human and its non-human counterpart has allowed human to dominate the weaker—the animals. In colonial circumstances, the indigenous population is labeled and treated as the animalized human. The natives are given the quality of being similar to the human ‗other‘, even the non- human. Colonization, then, becomes the setting where anthropocentrism and racism take place. By seeing the colonized land and people as weaker counterpart, the colony‘s oppression to the colonize land is connected to the oppression of its people.71
With the colony seeing the colonized land and its people as open to be oppressed, the exploitation of the land surely too will be connected to the
70 L. White, Jr., p.7 71 G. Huggan and H. Tiffin, p.4
40
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
exploitation of the people. The justification of this exploitation of the colonized land is based on the colony‘s perception of the indigenous land being a spaced that is unused or underused. The exploitation of the colonized people is also based on the colony‘s perception of the indigenous people being primitive and uncivilized.72
Huggan and Tiffin state that the exploitation in colonial setting is a place where human has taken the nature for granted, with the domination of human in the form of anthropocentrism relates to imperialism. The analysis, in this case, speaks about the power abuse of human over nature, with the aim of seeking for not only environmental justice, but also, social justice and economic justice.73
Huggan and Tiffin also add that this goal of wanting to protect the rights of the abused nature and people is an effort for the liberation of the oppressed. This effort should take into account the history of the natural and social world of the oppressed.74
Colonialism has shifted nature for the colonized population through the abuse of power. By using the colonial power, the colony used the so-called idea of development as a way to utilize and civilize the indigenous land and people, respectively.75 This way, the colony enforces the idea of how is the proper model of civilization, which includes naturalizing anthropocentrism in it. Colonialism shifted the idea of the colonized about the way nature is supposed to be treated
72 G. Huggan and H. Tiffin, p.4 73 G. Huggan and H. Tiffin, p.11 74 G. Huggan and H. Tiffin, p.14 75 G. Huggan and H. Tiffin, p.9
41
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
through the use of power. Huggan and Tiffin quotes Saro-Wiwa and the case of
Ogoni people and their land as an example. For these people, nature did not only provide for their everyday life, but it was sacred and related intimately to their community. Unfortunately, the so-called development brought by the abuse of power changed this.76 To liberate the colonized society from this way of thinking means to liberate their land from the abuse, too. Hence, one of postcolonial ecocriticism‘s commitments suggest that social justice for the colonized can only be fulfilled when environmental justice is achieved as well.
Huggan and Tiffin also emphasize to look within the idea of entitlement and how this is related to human and nature relationship in the colonial setting.
Speaking of entitlement means to talk about the sense of ownership. With the colony having the monopoly of the power, the indigenous people are forced to face the experience of dispossession and loss, with the consequence of the devastation of their pastoral.77 With the arrival of the colonial settlers, the indigenous people are stripped of their rights with their own land. The colony takes over the land to show how it is supposed to be used ‗properly‘. Huggan and
Tiffin mention that the experience of displacement, either legally claimed or emotionally experienced, should be explored in seeing between fellow human relationship and human and nature relationship.78
76 G. Huggan and H. Tiffin, p.43 77 G. Huggan and H. Tiffin, p.85 78 G. Huggan and H. Tiffin, p.121
42
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
3. On Resistance, Environmental Justice, and Social Justice
Seeing how the dominating power works in the dialogue of postcolonial ecocriticism, Huggan and Tiffin state that ―there is no social justice without environmental justice‖.79 By looking at the case of Saro-Wiwa, Huggan and
Tiffin, too, highlight the fact at a conclusion that the history of the colonial oppression and environmental oppression go hand in hand. Colonialism affects not only the population of the indigenous people, but also their land and their natural resources. Therefore, the attempt to put an end to the oppression on the people and the land should go hand in hand as well.
Christa Grewe-Volpp seems to have a mutual sentiment to Huggan and
Tiffin in the subject of justice in postcolonial ecocrticism context. Grewe-Volpp emphasizes the need to take a look within the Third-World to add a new perspective into environmentalism and its concern on social and environmental issues. The urge to see from within the Third-World context is claimed to be a proper way to see environmental and social justice from the perspective of the indigenous eyes, no through western‘s eyes. By doing so, it is possible to see how colonialism has changed the way land is perceived and used. After all, Grewe-
Volpp adds that ―the colonized subject cannot be seen separately from the effects of his or her colonized environment.‖80
79 G. Huggan and H. Tiffin, p.35 80 Christa Grewe-Volpp, ―No Environmental Justice Without Social Justice: A Green Postcolonialist Reading of Paul Marshal‘s The Chosen Place, the Timeless People‖ in Literature, Ecology, Ethics: Recent Trends in Ecocriticism, eds. Timo Muller and Michael Sauter (Heidelberg: Universitatverlag, 2012), 228.
43
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
To see from within the perspective of the indigenous people, as mentioned by Grewe-Volpp, means to see the colonized subject‘s own take on the history of their land and the people. This, too, means to see how domination and resistance are embodied in the indigenous community. Through transplantation, slavery, colonialism and imperialism, the colonized subjects are forced to crush their idea of the land. They are forced to accept Western‘s perception of how land is supposed to be valued. Colonization becomes Western‘s tool to shape the colonized perception on how to value and use their own land. The perception imported by the colony to the colonized is, of course, very exploitative.81
In the place where colonialism happens to exploit both the nature and the people, it is important to see the resistance as a means to find out in what way a positive alternative is possible for the environment and its inhabitants.82 It can be seen how colonial exploitation has granted the colony the control of people and their lands. This complete control of the colony has caused silence as a sign of powerlessness.83 Grewe-Volpp mentions that to fight against the exploitation, colonial subjects need to speak and act against it. This becomes a way to resist both colonial and environmental exploitation that has entered the body and the mind of these poor and oppressed people.
Grewe-Volpp adds that the possibilities of resistance are in the form of rejecting development as a way to resist the dominating power, it also includes to
81 C. Grewe-Volpp, p.229 82 C. Grewe-Volpp, p.230 83 C. Grewe-Volpp, p.232
44
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
―mistrust in the idea of western development‖. Grewe-Volpp also mentions that the concept of development, as suggested by Escobar, is a way for the First-World countries to take control of the social, economy, and the physical of the
‗enderdeveloped‘ Third-World countries.84 Development here becomes an instrument of dominating and suppressing the non-Western countries, therefore it needs to be fought against. The form of fighting against or resisting the notion of development, as suggested by Grewe-Volpp, might come in the form of ―refusing this development projects, even sabotaging them.‖85
However, achieving social and environmental justice by resisting does not necessarily mean to return to the pristine condition of the environment just like from the very beginning. It is impossible for the land and the colonized subject to return to its ‗original‘ condition after being scarred by the dominating colony.
Grewe-Volpp suggests that the most possible way of a radical change to achieve justice is by working on a new relationship that is more balanced in all aspects; environmentally, politically, economically, and culturally. This relationship needs to overcome the existence of hierarchy that comes from the imperial power structure. By liberating the nature and the dispossessed from the hierarchal system and its abusive way, the improvement for the nature and people is possible—with the possibility for how ecology is to be shaped is left open.86
84 C. Grewe-Volpp, p.233 85 C. Grewe-Volpp, p.235 86 C. Grewe-Volpp, p.235
45
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
CHAPTER III
THE EFFECT OF COLONIZATION ON THE NATURE AND THE
PEOPLE IN GHOSH’S SEA OF POPPIES
In the previous chapter, some studies on Ghosh‘s works have been reviewed along with the postcolonial ecocriticism theory to answer the research questions. This section focuses on the analysis of the effect of the colonization on the nature and people in Amitav Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies. The analysis works to see how human and nature is related to one another in the scene of colonial India.
This section is divided into two parts; the effect of colonization on the nature, and the effect of the colonization on the people to see how the practice of British colonization in India has affected the indigenous people and their land.
A. The Effect of Colonization on the Nature
Nature plays an important role for the characters in Sea of Poppies.
Through one of the characters, Deeti, Ghosh shows how humans rely on the nature. In the novel, Deeti is described as a native woman who lived on the suburb of Ghazipur. Making a living out of poppy farming, Deeti possesses an environmental consciousness for being directly involved with the nature. Her relationship with nature allows her to notice the difference that happens when East
India Company takes over India for opium cultivation. Being presented as the native in the novel, Deeti shows how nature plays a significant role in the life of the indigenous people.
46
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
The significance of nature in human‘s life can be seen from how nature provides everything that is needed to survive. In her everyday life, for example,
Deeti and her family go to the Ganga River to bathe. This shows how Deeti‘s everyday need of water is fulfilled by the Ganga:
…Now, her mind turned to her shrine room again: with the hour of the noontime puja drawing close, it was time to go to the river for a bath. After massaging poppy-seed oil into Kabutri‘s hair and her own, Deeti draped her spare sari over her shoulder and led her daughter towards the water, across the field.87 As a poppy farmer, Deeti indeed makes a living from the nature. Nature works as a day to day working place for her. For being able to only plant poppies,
Deeti still makes the most out of it by making use of the poppies to fulfill her own daily needs. From the previous quotation, it can be seen how she and her daughter, Kabutri, use the poppy seeds oil to be massaged on their hair. This is not the only example of how the poppies are being used regularly in Deeti‘s daily life.
In fact, Deeti also uses the poppy seeds in her cooking. For example, she uses the seeds in cooking alu-posth88, which is a dish made of potatoes cooked in poppy- seed paste. (SOP, 7)
Even during her escape with Kalua, Deeti also feels how nature provides for her. They both manage to survive by the help of the nature. This following quotation shows how by being close to the Ganga, Deeti and Kalua are saved from being hungry or thirsty despite having no money at all.
87 Ghosh, Amitav. Sea of Poppies. (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2008), p.7. From this onwards, Sea of Poppies is to be abbreviated as SOP with pagination only. 88 Also spelled as aloo posto.
47
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
…Every evening Kalua would light a fire and Deeti would knead and cook a sufficient number of rotis to see them through the day. With the Ganga close at hand, they had so far lacked for neither food nor water.(SOP,189) Other than helping Deeti in sustaining her life by providing food and water in need, nature also holds a place in Deeti‘s spiritual life. It can be seen from how
Deeti shows her respect and gratitude to the nature that provides for her. To give thanks to the nature, Deeti pours out the water and the offering to the Ganga River and to the holy city of Benares89, which is shown in the following quotation:
…Turning in the direction of Benares, in the west, Deeti hoisted her daughter aloft, to pour out a handful of water as a tribute to the holy city. Along with the offering, a leaf flowed out of the child‘s cupped palms. They turned to watch as the river carried it downstream towards the ghats of Ghazipur. (SOP,7) After expressing her thankfulness to the nature by giving the offering to the holy river and the holy city, Deeti fills her pitcher with the water from the river to be placed in her puja90 room, where she will also give flowers and offerings to the deities (SOP, 8). In India, flower offerings during the worship are done to delight the deities in hope that they will bestow prosperity to the family.
Not only that nature fulfills Deeti‘s daily needs and becomes a part of her spiritual life, it is also nature who gives Deeti a ‗sight‘ about her future. In the beginning of the novel, it is the Ganga who gives Deeti the ‗sight‘ about the Ibis, the ship that will change her life forever. This next quotation shows how the
89 Also known as Varanasi, one of the holy cities in India. 90 Prayer
48
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
nature bestows signs about the future upon Deeti by giving her a vision to her through the contact with the sacred waters.
In time, among the legions who came to regard the Ibis as their ancestor, it was accepted that it was the river itself that had granted Deeti the vision: that the image of the Ibis had been transported upstream, like an electric current, the moment the vessel made contact with the sacred waters. This would mean that it happened in the second week of March 1838, for that was when the Ibis dropped anchor off Ganga-Sagar Island, where the holy river debouches into the Bay of Bengal. (SOP,10) The previous quotations show how Deeti lives harmoniously with the nature. They also represent the idea of human and nature having a symbiotic relationship to one another. Since Deeti and her family rely so much on the nature, it is not surprising to see how changes that affect the nature will also affect their lives. As mentioned previously, being directly involved with the nature has caused
Deeti to possess an environmental consciousness. Deeti is included in those who are aware and notices about the changes that happen to the nature.
Sea of Poppies presents us an image of how British colonization in India affected the nature, and natives like Deeti are of those who are forced to accept the changes in the environment that also influence a numerous changes in her daily life. Sea of Poppies presents the fact that in the late 18th century, British has established a monopoly over opium production in India. By then, British has forced a new cultivation system to Indian‘s nature and natives. To gain as huge profit as possible, British forces the natives to plant poppies and fulfill British‘s high demand of opium. Colonialism in India has changed the way poppies are produced in India, it can be seen in the following quotation:
49
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
When Deeti was her daughter‘s age, things were different: poppies had been a luxury then, grown in small clusters between the fields that bore the main winter crops—wheat, masoor dal and vegetables. Her mother would send some of her poppy seeds to the oil-press, and the rest she would keep for the house, some for replanting, and some to cook with meat and vegetables. As for the sap, it was sieved of impurities and left to dry, until the sun turned it into hard abkari afeem; at that time, no one thought of producing the wet, treacly chandu that was made and packaged in the English factory, to be sent across the sea in boats. (SOP,28) From the previous quotation it can be from Deeti‘s point of view that the arrival of British colony has changed the way poppies are cultivated in India. Deeti witnesses how at first poppies were planted alongside the main winter crops like wheat, masoor dal91, and vegetables. However, Deeti cannot find those winter crops anymore because the cultivation system is different already; farmers only plant poppies instead of those usual main crops. The start of production of poppies in a large scale to be sent into the opium factory and to be exported outside India happens when British arrived and imposed the new cultivation system. Poppies are no longer a luxury because it is being planted all year in a massive amount as well.
Since poppies are planted in a large amount to fulfill British demands of opium production, poppies have taken over the land all across India. This cultivation of poppies has changed the way the land is used. The enormous scale of poppy cultivation is, indeed, a form of abuse to the land itself. With the colony taking over the land and the natives, growing opium becomes a form of land
91 Lentil
50
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
exploitation. From one places to another, it is difficult to find other type of crops being planted other than the poppies.
It happened at the end of winter, in a year when the poppies were strangely slow to shed their petals: for mile after mile, from Benares onwards, the Ganga seemed to be flowing between twin glaciers, both its banks being blanketed by thick drifts of white petalled flowers. It was as if the snows of the high Himalayas had descended on the plains to await the arrival of Holi and its springtime profusion of colour. (SOP, 3) The quotation shows how poppies take over the fertile land by the Ganga River all the way from Benares to Deeti‘s village in the Northern Bihar, which is located in the outskirts of the town of Ghazipur. The poppies do not only take over Deeti‘s village, but they also cover the surroundings of Deeti‘s childhood home near the
Karamnasa River. Deeti notices how the landscape near the river has a great deal of change since her childhood, and she finds only the remnants of the harvest alongside the fertile riverbank. (SOP,188)
Deeti notices how the colonization has transformed the landscape. As someone who is close to nature, Deeti finds herself agitated over the loss of greenery in her surroundings. She longs for the presence of the vegetable and grain in the middle of the massive flowers takeover, which can be seen in:
…The landscape on the rivers‘ shores had changed a great deal since Deeti‘s childhood and looking around now, it seemed to her that the Karamnasa‘s influence had spilled over its banks, spreading its blight far beyond the lands that drew upon its waters: the opium harvest having been recently completed, the plants had been left to wither in the fields, so that the countryside was blanketed with the parched remnants. Except for the foliage of a few mango and jackfruit trees, nowhere was anything green to relieve the eye. This, she knew, was what her own fields looked like, and were she at home today, she would have been asking herself what she would eat in the months ahead: where the vegetables? The grains? (SOP,188)
51
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
The landscape, as shown in the quotation, is filled with the remnants of the poppy harvest. Deeti cannot help but feeling upset over the fact that the environment has lost its green color. For Deeti, being able to see the greenery in her environment brings such sense of relief. Unfortunately, seasonal crops are no longer planted in order to gain as much poppy harvest as possible. In this case, winter crops like vegetables and grains are nowhere to be found. The cultivation of poppies in a massive amount has created an obvious problem which is the loss of nature‘s biodiversity.
Since the poppies monoculture is forced, it has resulted in various problems on the environment. Previously, it can be seen the nature has lost its biodiversity with the land being taken over entirely by the poppies. Another apparent result of this practice is its effect to the soil. On the long run, monoculture may result in the damage of the soil. The damage may be seen in how the valuable soil nutrients deplete over time since the poppies monoculture requires the cultivation of poppies over a large area for years. Biodiversity is needed by the soil to maintain the nutrients to keep it fertile. Since the farmers in the novel do not plant the seasonal crops anymore, there is no crop rotation effort to restore the nutrients that are found in the soil. The most obvious effect can be seen in how Deeti along with some other farmers are experiencing late harvest, which is possibly caused by the lack of available soil nutrients. The late harvest has caused uneasiness for Deeti and her neighbors who also work as poppy farmers. (SOP, 3)
52
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
In addition, it appears that the poppies monoculture also affect the animal population in various ways. The enormous amount of poppies in the field is shown to have pacified the animals, as shown in:
…As her steps lengthened, she saw that on some nearby fields, the crop was well in advance of her own: some of her neighbours had already nicked their pods and the white ooze of the sap could be seen congealing around the parallel incisions of the nukha. The sweet, heady odour of the bleeding pods had drawn swarms of insects, and the air was buzzing with bees, grasshoppers and wasps; many would get stuck in the ooze and tomorrow, when the sap turned colour, their bodies would merge into the black gum, becoming a welcome addition to the weight of the harvest. The sap seemed to have a pacifying effect even on the butterflies, which flapped their wings in oddly erratic patterns, as though they could not remember how to fly. (SOP, 27) In the previous quotation, it is Deeti again who notices how the smell of the poppy sap affects the insects like bees, grasshoppers, wasps and butterflies. The smell of the sap does not only pacify these insects, but it also potentially kills them.
Sea of Poppies also presents the negative effect of British colonization on
India‘s nature through the depiction of the opium factory. The opium factory in
Ghazipur as shown in the novel is the actual portrayal of Ghazipur Opium Factory that was established by East India Company, and it is the biggest and the oldest opium factory in the country. On her way to pick her sick husband up from work,
Deeti witnesses how the opium factory has caused negative effects to its surroundings.
Although the Sudder Opium Factory was indisputably large and well-guarded, there was nothing about its exterior to suggest to an onlooker that it was among the most precious jewels in Queen Victoria‘s crown. On the contrary, a miasma of lethargy seemed always to hang over the factory‘s surroundings. (SOP, 89)
53
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Despite of the huge profit British has gained from the opium production, the quotation shows how the factory cannot be considered as a place of luxury or so.
On the other hand, the factory has caused ‗a miasma of lethargy‘, showing how the factory has caused dullnesss and produced an awful smell to its surroundings.
On her way to the factory in Kalua‘s oxen cart, Deeti and Kabutri suffer because of the opium-filled air. The waste of the factory in the form of fog takes over the fresh air of the city. The polluted air gives a terrible effect not only to humans, but also to the animals. Deeti, Kabutri, Kalua, including Kalua‘s oxen and everyone nearby the factory cannot help but sneeze because of the air pollution.
As Kalua‘s cart rolled on, towards the factory‘s main compound, Deeti and Kabutri began to sneeze; soon, Kalua and the oxen were sniffling too, for they had now drawn abreast of the godowns where farmers came to dispose of their ‗poppy trash‘—leaves, stalks, and roots, all of which were used in the packaging of the drug. Ground up for storage, these remains produced a fine dust that hung in the air like a fog of snuff. Rare was the passer-by who could brave this mist without exploding into a paroxysm of sneezes and sniffles—and yet it was a miracle, plain to behold, that the coolies pounding the trash were no more affected by the dust than were their young English overseers. (SOP, 89) The condition within the opium factory itself is worse. The smell of the raw opium fills the factory, mixed with the unpleasant smell of human‘s sweat as a result of being confined in hot and closed spaces. Deeti, who makes her first visit to the opium factory, is overwhelmed by condition of the factory that she has breathing difficulty and finds herself almost faint.
…The air inside was hot and fetid, like that of a closed kitchen, except that the smell was not of spices and oil, but of liquid opium, mixed with the dull stench of sweat—a reek so powerful that she had to pinch her nose to keep herself from gagging…not till she
54
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
was through the door did she allow herself to breathe freely again,: now as she was trying to cleanse her lungs of the odour of raw, churned opium, she heard someone say: Bhauji? Are you alright? The voice proved to be that of their relative and it was all she could do not to collapse on him. (SOP, 92) The waste of the opium factory does not only pollute the air, but it also contaminates the Ganga River, and it affects the animals in the environment. For instance, Deeti notices how the factory‘s effluence is badly affecting the population of monkeys near the factory. After consuming the contaminated water from the Ganga River, the monkeys seem to mimic an opium addict; those monkeys lose their excitement and are stupefied by the factory‘s waste.
…The monkeys that lived around it, for instance: Deeti pointed a few of these out to Kabutri as the ox-cart trundled towards the walls. Unlike others of their kind they never came down from the trees it was to lap at the open sewers that drained the factory‘s effluents; after having sated their cravings, they would climb back into the branches to resume their stupefied scrutiny of the Ganga and its currents. (SOP, 89) To add, the broken earthenware pots that are scattered around the rivers also cause the pollution to the Ganga water. The pots, which are used to contain raw opium, seem to contaminate the population of the fish. The population of the aquatic animal is under the influence of the raw opium remnants, which can be seen in:
…This stretch of riverbank was unlike any other, for the ghats around the Carcanna were shored up with thousands of broken earthenware gharas—the round-bottomed vessels in which raw opium was brought to the factory. The belief was widespread that fish were more easily caught after they had nibbled at the shards, and as a result the bank was always crowded with fishermen. (SOP, 90) The effect of the monoculture in the poppy cultivation system which is imposed by British to India‘s nature also affects the life of the indigenous people.
55
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Through the cultivation of the cash crop in a huge amount, British have exploited both the nature and the indigenous population. The following section will elaborate in what way the indigenous people are exploited in line with the nature exploitation.
B. The Effect of Colonization on the People
The exploitation of both the nature and the indigenous people in Ghosh‘s
Sea of Poppies go hand in hand. The forced perspective from the colony that changes the nature of course will change the life of the people as well. The indigenous people in the novel suffer under both colonial and environmental exploitations.
In Sea of Poppies, during British colonialism, the exploitation of the nature and its resources occurs simultaneously with the exploitation of the indigenous people. Colonization has shifted both the ecosystem of India and also the life of the indigenous people. In the novel, people like Deeti and her family become those who struggle under the colonial exploitation.
It has been explained previously that before the arrival of the British colony in India, poppies were such a luxury for the indigenous people like Deeti, and were planted in a small amount only to fit the needs of a household to be used for specific purposes as well. The beginning of the new cultivation system that is imposed by the British to the nature marks the beginning of the exploitation of the indigenous people at the same time.
The exploitation of the nature goes hand in hand with the exploitation of the nature. In cultivating the opium poppy in a large scale, the colony does not
56
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
only oppress the nature, but they also oppress the indigenous people. Being abused by the colony to only cultivate poppies has caused complications in the life of the Indian natives. The indigenous people struggle to face the rapid changes that are caused by the colonialism that affects not only their natural ecosystem, but also their everyday lives.
As previously mentioned, one of the changes in the environment is how poppies are planted in a large scale for a whole year. To make sure the indigenous people are fulfilling the colony‘s high demand of the opium production, farmers are forced not to plant their usual seasonal crops but to plant the poppies instead.
Contracts are set prior to the opium cultivation and they are to be signed by the farmers, so these farmers are to work under the colony to produce as much opium as possible, it is shown in:
…She had only to look around to know that here, as in the village she had left, everyone‘s land was in hock to the agents of the opium factory: every farmer had been served with a contract, the fulfilling of which left them with no option but to strew their land with poppies. And now, with the harvest over and little grain at home, they would have to plunge still deeper into debt to feed their families. It was as if the poppy had become the carrier of Karamnasa‘s malign taint. (SOP, 188) Deeti is one of the farmers that have no other choice but to plant her fields with the poppies. She is also bounded with the enforced contract, just like the other farmers. These farmers, as shown in the quotation, cannot even sustain themselves with the little grain they own, because they have been denied the rights to plant the traditional crops that they need.
57
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
In addition, there is a reason why the farmers only planted a small amount of poppies in the middle of the traditional crops. The cultivation of poppies requires extra care, as shown in:
In the old days, farmers would keep a little of their home-made opium for their families, to be used during illnesses, or at harvests and weddings; the rest they would sell to the local nobility, or to pykari merchants from Patna. Back then, a few clumps of poppy were enough to provide for a household‘s needs, leaving a little over, to be sold: no one was inclined to plant more because all the work it took to grow poppies—fifteen fences and bunds to be built; purchases of manure and constant watering; and after all that, the frenzy of the harvest, each bulb having to be individually nicked, drained and scraped. Such punishment was bearable when you had a patch or two of poppies—but what sane person would want to multiply these labours when there were better, more useful crops to grow, like wheat, dal, vegetables? (SOP, 28) As previously shown in the quotation, growing poppies takes a tremendous effort from the farmer, from making sure the availability manure and water, to the extra care during harvest. This is why in the past, farmers only planted poppies in a little patch of land to be used only during illnesses, harvests, or weddings.
In harvesting the poppy sap, the timing must be precise as well. The lateness in harvesting only causes the extra care in growing the poppies becomes useless. Harvest needs to be done efficiently or else the farmers will not gain anything from the harvest, for the remnants of the poppies are not valuable for the opium factory.
…The timing had to be exactly right because the priceless sap flowed only for a brief period in the plant‘s span of life: a day or two this way of that, and the pods were of no more value than the blossoms of a weed. (SOP, 5) Considering all the care and effort in growing and harvesting the poppies, it is reasonable why in the past the indigenous farmers only plant a little poppy
58
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
alongside with the other crops. With British colony forcing the farmers to cultivate poppies in a huge amount, imagine the amount of effort it takes to grow the flowers. This is another form of how the natives are oppressed. In other words, planting poppies becomes a torture for these people.
The abuse towards the indigenous population does not stop on giving the extra care on the poppies cultivation, but it proceeds to how they are forced to sell their harvest to the factory. Opium is the exclusive monopoly of the British colony under the East India Company. This means, people like Deeti are not entitled of the fortune brought by the poppies she has harvested. Their harvest is directly brought to the factory in earthenware gharas92 where each detail of the opium production has been specifically planned by the East India Company‘s directors in
London.
…Hukam Singh had told Deeti that the measure of every ingredient was precisely laid down by the Company‘s directors in faraway London: each package of opium was to consist of exactly one seer and seven-and a half chittacks of the drug, the ball being wrapped in five chittacks of poppy-leaf rotis, half of fine grade and half coarse, the whole being moistened with no more and no less than five chittacks of lewah. (SOP, 95) The previous quotation shows how people like Deeti and her husband
Hukam Singh, who are a farmer and an opium factory worker, respectively, have no control over opium and its production. This is because everything has been arranged by the people in East Indian Company. Farmers like Deeti, especially, are only obliged to hand their harvest over to the factory on a monthly basis where
92 Pots
59
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
it is to be weighed and graded into either chandee (fine) or ganta (coarse). (SOP,
90)
As reflected in the novel, British colony in India is sustained by the monopoly of the opium production. The monopoly only gives advantages to the
British merchants, which in the novel is represented by Benjamin Burnham. To
Burnham, the exploitation of the nature through the colonization is a benefit granted from British to India, it can be seen in:
‗For the simple reason, Reid,‘ said Mr Burnham patiently, ‗that British rule in India could not be sustained without opium – that is all there is to it, and let us not pretend otherwise… Do you imagine that British rule would be possible in this impoverished land if it were not for this source of wealth? And if we reflect on the benefits that British rule has conferred upon India, does it not follow that opium is this land‘s greatest blessing? Does it not follow that it is our God-given duty to confer these benefits upon others?‘ (SOP, 113) In his talk with Zachary Reid, Benjamin Burnham bluntly states his opinion on the exploitation of India‘s nature and indigenous population. In Burnham‘s perspective, British have successfully made use of opium, India‘s only source of wealth. According to Burnham, British rule has properly helped to utilize opium for human‘s benefit, and without it India is just an impoverished land.
However, it is obvious that the exclusive monopoly of the opium only benefits British. Opium as British‘s source of wealth has caused a widespread poverty and hunger to the indigenous people. The cultivation of a cash crop like poppy makes it impossible for the people to survive. Many of the farmers are forced to leave their villages in search for a better job, but it somehow useless and they are still living in poverty and hunger, as shown in:
60
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
…The town was thronged with hundreds of other impoverished transients, many of whom were willing to sweat themselves half to death for a few handfuls of rice. Many of these people had been driven from their villages by the flood of flowers that had washed over the countryside: lands that once provided sustenance were now swamped by the rising tide of poppies; food was so hard to come by that people were glad to lick the leaves in which offerings were made at temples or sip the starchy water from a pot in which rice had been boiled. (SOP, 198) These people, including characters like Deeti too, are the victim of British opium monopoly. Not only that these people are forced to sign a contract, they are also given cash advances along with the contract. The cash advances should be returned with their earnings from the harvest.
Come the cold weather, the English sahibs would allow little else to be planted; their agents would go from home to home, forcing cash advances on the farmers, making them sign asámi contracts. It was impossible to say no to them: if you refused they would leave their silver hidden in your house, or throw it through a window. It was no use telling the white magistrate that you hadn‘t accepted the money and your thumbprint was forged: he earned commissions on the opium and would never let you off. And, at the end of it, your earnings would come to no more than three-and-a- half-sicca rupees, just about enough to pay off your advance. (SOP, 28) However, not even the earning from the harvest is enough for the farmers.
The previous quotation shows the farmer‘s earning is too small it can only cover the advance. These farmers have no other choice but to start another season of poppy cultivation with a new round of debt. The loan for the farmers, too, has a huge interest, as shown in:
…She gave in and agreed to place the impression of her thumb on the seth‘s account book in exchange for six months‘ worth of wheat, oil and gurh. Only as she was leaving did it occur to her to ask how much she owed and what the interest was. The seth‘s answers took her breath away: his rates were such that her debt would double every six months; in a few years, all the land would
61
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
be forfeit. Better to eat weeds than to take such a loan: she tried to return the goods but it was too late. (SOP, 152) The debts system and its huge interest are the reasons why a lot of the farmers lose their lands and leave the countryside. The farmers eventually end up with no money and no land to work on. In some cases, a lot of people choose to leave the country and become indentured labors. Ratna and Champa are those people that
Deeti meets on the Ibis that choose to leave instead of living in starvation.
As for stories, there was no end to them: two of the women, Ratna and Champa, were sisters, married to a pair of brothers whose lands were contracted to the opium factory and could no longer support them; rather than starve, they have decided to indenture themselves together—whatever happened in the future, they would at least have the consolation of a shared fate. (SOP, 237) The opium factory displays not only the trace of natural exploitation, but also human exploitation. Not only that the factory is established by the British,
Ghazipur Opium Factory is also exclusively managed by the British. The superintendent of the factory is a senior official of the East India Company, and the other important positions such as overseers, accountants, storekeepers, and chemists in the factory are also occupied by the British. These people order several hundred of Indian workers for the Company‘s benefit. (SOP, 88)
On her visit to the opium factory to pick her sick husband up, Deeti does not only discover the horrible condition of the opium factory‘s surrounding, but she also witnesses how the employees of the factory are working under such an inhumane condition. The working condition for the workers in factory is so horrible; the factory is polluted by the opium, and in some rooms the temperature is cool, almost wintry, while in some other places, the temperature is too hot.
62
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
There are not enough lights in the factory, and there is not enough space either since there are a lot of workers placed in the same room at the same time.
As the result of an awful working condition, a lot of workers in the factory are in an awful health condition as well. Seeing the workers and their working condition in the factory seems to trigger Deeti‘s pity to them. These workers happen to be badly affected by the drugs they work on, and some of them become ill since they are made to do such work like sinking themselves in the opium filled tanks. These people start to look like a living dead in Deeti‘s eyes.
…When her eyes had grown more accustomed to the gloom, she discovered the secret of those circling torsos: they were bare- bodied men, sunk waist-deep in tanks of opium, tramping round and round so often to sludge. Their eyes were vacant, glazed, and yet somehow they managed to keep moving, as slow as ants in honey, tramping, treading. When they could move no more, they say on the edges of the tanks, stirring the dark ooze only with their feet. These seated men had more the look of ghouls than any living thing she had ever seen: their eyes glowed red in the dark and they appeared completely naked, their loincloths—if indeed they had any—being so steeped in the drug as to be indistinguishable from their skin. (SOP, 92) To add the way the workers are oppressed, they do not only work in such an inhumane condition, but they also are tormented by the British overseers who watch their every move. White overseers patrol every place, they are armed with tools like metal scoops, glass ladles, and long-handled rakes, and are ready to punish the workers (SOP, 93). For these workers, there is no room even for minor mistakes. Deeti witnesses how the workers in the opium factory carefully treat the ball of opium as if their lives are depended on it. The horror breaks when one of the workers drops the opium ball, and he receives caning from the overseer as a consequence of his mistake.
63
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
…How could they throw so accurately with one hand, while holding on with the other—and that too at a height where the slightest slip would mean certain death? The sureness of their grip seemed amazing to Deeti, until suddenly one of them did indeed drop a ball sending it crashing to the floor, where it burst open, splattering its gummy contents everywhere. Instantly the offender was set upon by cane-wielding overseers and his howls and shrieks went echoing through the vast, chilly chamber. (SOP, 94) However, for being able to work with the colony, the landlords in India are gaining advantages from the opium cultivation. These landlords who are from the high caste in India‘s society gain profits from the association they make with the colony.
… Little did they know of the perils of the consignment trade and how the risks were borne by those who provided the capital. Year after year, with British and American traders growing even more skilled in evading Chinese laws, the market for opium expanded, and the Raja and his associates made handsome profits on their investments. (SOP, 84) Unlike the low caste farmers, the landlords are able to gain huge profits from their association with British Colony. However, this is not something that lasts for long, considering what happens to Raja Neel Halder. How the relationship of the colony and zemindary in Neel Halder‘s case will be explored more in the following chapter.
In the frame of colonization, the exploitation of the nature and the people happen simultaneously. The indigenous people are the living proof of how anthropocentrism in colonial frame goes beyond human and nature relationship, but there is also the ‗other‘ human that are oppressed for the Colony‘s benefit.
Resistance is needed as the form of fighting back against both forms of exploitations. Resistance may offer an available possibility to fight against the injustice caused by the colonizer‘s exploitative attitude.
64
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
CHAPTER IV
RESISTANCE AS A MEANS TO DISCOVER THE ENVIRONMENTAL
AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN GHOSH’S SEA OF POPPIES
In the previous chapter, the effect of colonization towards India‘s nature and indigenous people has been discussed as a means to see how human and nature relate to one another in colonial settings. The findings show how both the nature and the people experience exploitation and injustice caused by the colonization. This section is to see how resistance works as the way to react against the nature and human exploitation.
A. The Early Resistance
The early resistance refers to the small attempts done by the indigenous population to fight, protest, and raise their voice against the injustice that oppresses them and their nature. Ghosh presents how British completely takes control of the people and the land in India. The native only has a small option to fight back, since they are almost powerless in the presence of their oppressors.
In Deeti‘s case, there is an urge to fight against the long term and vast amount of opium poppy cultivation. To her, such practice is a punishment that needs to be fought against. As a farmer, she knows that the normal amount of poppy to be planted is only a patch or two of poppies, and it is to be planted alongside main crops like wheat, dal, or vegetables.
…Such punishment was bearable when you had a patch or two of poppies – but what sane person would want to multiply these
65
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
labours when there were better, more useful crops to grow, like wheat, dal, vegetables? (SOP, 28) The amount of poppies which has taken over the land seems insane and overwhelming to Deeti. She voices the concern of her kind, the peasants, who think that they are in need of other crops instead of just poppies. Deeti reflects someone who Grewe-Volpp will identify as a colonized subject who is seen to have his/her ideas of the land being crushed by the colonization93. By having her own perception on how to value and use the land, Deeti expresses her thoughts against the exploitative perception of the colony.
However, British has made it impossible for the locals, especially the farmers, to fight against them. The local farmers have no option but to obey since they are bounded by the contracts that they have signed. For people like Deeti, of course they will prefer to plant main seasonal crops to sustain their lives instead of planting cash crops like the poppies. For people who refuse to plant poppies for the East India Company, British will frame the farmers or their family by leaving silvers in the farmer‘s houses. In the end, these farmers have no option but to be placed in jail or to be transported outside India to be made into slaves.
…It was impossible to say no to them: if you refused they would leave their silver hidden in your house, or throw it through a window. It was no use telling the white magistrate that you hadn‘t accepted the money and your thumbprint was forged: he earned commissions on the opium and would never let you off. (SOP, 92) The way how British colony forces the locals and frames them to gain a complete control over their property and even their life shows how colonial exploitation has
93 C. Grewe-Volpp, p.229
66
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
granted the colony the control of the people and their lands. The unavailability of access of the indigenous people to speak on the behalf of their lives is what
Grewe-Volpp considers as the indigenous people‘s silence as a sign of powerlessness.94
The fact that the farmers‘ harvest is valued cheaply by British gains protest from the indigenous people. For the farmers, especially, it is unfair that they are forced not plant crops to sustain their life while their effort is cheaply prized.
Deeti as the representative of the farmers raises a protest against the little amount money she accepts for her labor. It upsets Deeti that her harvest for a whole season is only worth a little, that there is only small possibility for her to feed her family with the money she earns from selling the raw opium.
…But a rude surprise was waiting at the Carcanna: after her gharas of opium had been weighed, counted and tested, Deeti was shown the account book for Hukam Singh‘s plot of land. It turned out that at the start of the season, her husband had taken a much larger advance than she had thought: now, the meagre proceeds were barely enough to cover his debt. She looked disbelievingly at the discoloured coins that were laid before her: Aho so ka karwat? she cried. Just six dams for the whole harvest? It‘s not enough to feed a child, let alone a family. (SOP, 152) Deeti is not the only one to make such protest. The other farmers are also against such unfair treatment. The phenomenon where the indigenous people speak against or protest against the colonial domination is the way how resistance is embodied in within the community.95 Protests can be heard in the opium factory when the harvest is weighed. Most farmers end up being angry at how cheap the
94 C. Grewe-Volpp, p.232 95 C. Grewe-Volpp, p.229
67
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
factory values the farmer‘s hard work. Complaints and quarrels are unavoidable, yet there is no room for these peasants to express their objection against this injustice. To protest means to get beaten by the landlords. Also, these farmers still have to accept the consequence that they are to start a new season of poppy cultivation by a bigger burden of debt.
…Nearby, held back by a line of lathi-carrying peons, stood the farmers whose vessels were being weighed; alternatively tense and angry, cringing and resigned, they were waiting to find out if their harvests for the year had fulfilled their contracts—if not, they would have to start the next year with a still greater load of debt. Deeti watched as a peon carried a slip of paper to a farmer and was rebuffed with a howl of protest: all over the hall, she noticed, there were quarrels and altercations breaking out, with farmers shouting at serishtas, and landlord berating their tenants. (SOP, 92) Farmers have done effort such as protesting against their landlords or the factory. Unfortunately, it does not affect the system that has been forced by
British. In other words, protests do not stop British from exploiting India‘s nature and indigenous people. Some farmers choose to sell their land to avoid living in hunger (SOP, 152). In some other cases, when protests do not work, the other option that the farmers can do is to leave their homeland as the only available choice left. For instance, this is what happens to Ratna and Champa, two sisters that choose the option of crossing the terrifying prospect of crossing the Black
Water, rather than staying and serving the colony in poverty and hunger.
As for stories there was no end to them: two of the women, Ratna and Champa, were sisters, married to a pair of brothers whose lands were contracted to the opium factory and could no longer support them; rather than starve, they had decided to indenture themselves together – whatever happened in the future, they would at least have the consolation of a shared fate. (SOP, 237)
68
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
To emphasize, there is only a little possibility available for the people to speak or act against the colony. In some cases, protesting against the injustice does not always mean well for the indigenous people. The only available left for the natives are to leave their homeland as a way to put an end to their oppressed lives.
B. Migration and Resistance
When there is no space left for justice, crossing the Black Water to leave as a way to resist the exploitation caused by the authoritarian colonialism. Ghosh presents the theme journey crossing the Black Water as a theme which bonds between one character and another. To look at it closely, in choosing migration, the characters are faced with the uncertainty of how they life would be afterwards.
Despite the uncertainty, there is still an urge to sail across the sea as a statement to fight against the injustice. Losing one‘s caste after migrating and crossing the
Black Water is a consequence, but also the point where the social justice is achieved, and so is the environmental justice. The Ibis gives birth to a new
‗society‘ where everyone lives in balance, there is no unfair treatment, and nobody oppresses anybody.
As previously mentioned, people like Deeti have attempted to do all they can to protest or to voice against the injustice that oppresses their lives. Through characters like Deeti, Ghosh aims to show how resistance is portrayed as a reaction against the exploitation of India‘s nature and indigenous population.
Deeti is created by Ghosh as a character that is victimized by the opium—being drugged by her husband‘s family in her wedding night, having an opium addict
69
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
husband, and living in poverty because of the cultivation of opium poppy. Her entire life has revolved around opium that Deeti herself comes to realize the power opium has in controlling people.
As for Deeti, the more she ministered the drug, the more she came to respect its potency: how frail a creature was a human being, to be tamed by such tiny doses of this substance! She saw now why the factory in Ghazipur was so diligently patrolled by the sahibs and their sepoys – for a little bit of this gum could give her such power over the life, the character, the very soul of this elderly woman, then with more of it at her disposal, why should she not be able to seize kingdoms and control multitudes? And surely this could not be the only such substance upon the earth? (SOP, 37) Deeti discovers the power of the opium as a means to control people when she uses the substance to gradually drug her mother-in-law. She understands, then, how human being is such a weak creature compared to the opium. By deciding to leave her family and her old life behind, and detaching herself from the opium,
Deeti has released herself from all of the strong forces that keep her oppressed.
Ghosh aims to show how by choosing to run and live with Kalua, Deeti has resisted against the domination that keeps bounding her. Deeti has decided that she is no longer to be oppressed by her husband‘s family and East India
Company.
In addition, there is something so interesting about how Ghosh creates
Deeti and Kalua to end as one and another‘s company, especially in considering the two characters‘ caste differences. How Deeti supposedly treats Kalua can be seen in the following quotation:
…he was of the leather-workers‘ caste and Hukam Singh, as a high-caste Rajput, believed that the sight of his face would bode ill for the day ahead…Deeti, too, was careful to keep her face covered in the driver‘s presence: it was only when she went back inside, to
70
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
wake Kabutri, her six-year-old daughter, that she allowed the ghungta of her sari to slip off her head. (SOP, 4) Kalua‘s caste is Chamar, which is considered as the untouchables. It is believed that only a sight of Kalua‘s face alone is able to bring bad luck. Deeti, too, needs to be careful in showing her face to the oxen-cart driver, which is why she is required to her face hidden behind her ghungta96 in the presence of Kalua.
Even so, Kalua still helps Deeti from being forced to be a sati by her husband‘s family. Kalua himself is someone who is wounded by the people of high caste. In one occasion, three gamble-loving landowners force Kalua to do an act of bestiality just to get back at him for their defeat in a gamble. Deeti witnesses this discreetly, and she helps to clean Kalua when it is impossible for him to do it by himself because he is injured. The fact that Deeti is not allowed to touch Kalua because of their caste differences does not stop Deeti to help Kalua. The feeling of gratitude drives Kalua to save Deeti from the fire that will burn her and her husband‘s bodies together. Through Kalua and Deeti, Ghosh wants to show that despite of the rigid caste differences and the rules that forbid these two characters, a balanced relationship between one human to another is possible be achieved. In a caste-bound society that always disadvantages the untouchable ones, it is Kalua who helps Deeti to put an end to the injustice she faces in her old life.
Deeti finds the prospect upon running away with Kalua to be exciting. To leave the life that once oppressed her create an immense joy within herself. It is
96 Veil
71
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
like she is given a chance to relive a new life with Kalua, a man from the untouchable caste that has rescued her.
… Even then she did not feel herself to be living in the same sense as before: a curious feeling, of joy mixed with resignation, crept into her heart, for it was as if she really had died and been delivered betimes in rebirth, to her next life: she had shed the body of the old Deeti, with the burden of its karma; she had paid the price her stars had demanded of her, and was free now to create a new destiny as she willed, with whom she chose – and she knew that it was with Kalua that this life would be lived, until another death claimed the body that he had torn from the flames. (SOP, 175) As a way to complete Deeti and Kalua‘s life transformation, Ghosh presents them with new names; Aditi and Madhu, respectively (SOP, 229). Both introduced themselves as a couple of Chamars. To completely free themselves from their old life, both are agree to sign up as migrants. They are to be sent as labors across the sea to Mareech, or Mauritius. Deeti is frightened of the outlook on leaving to a completely strange land. It is a widespread tale that Mareech is a land inhabited by demons and beasts; this causes uneasiness in Deeti‘s heart
(SOP, 201). In addition, the worst part of leaving their homeland and crossing the
Black Water is losing their caste. This, too, causes such discomfort to Deeti, as seen in:
She tried to imagine what it would be like to be in their place, to know that you were forever an outcaste; to know that you would never again enter your father‘s house; that you would never throw your arms around your mother; never eat a meal with your sisters and brothers; never feel the cleansing touch of the Ganga. And to know also that for the rest of your days you would eke out a living on some wild, demon-plagues island? (SOP, 71) As seen in the previous quotation, to lose one‘s caste, as mentioned, means to lose one‘s relationship with one‘s family. The event in which Deeti loses the
72
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
ties with her family represents a lot more. Deeti experiences the dispossession and loss. By cutting the ties, she has lost not only her family, but also the rights to her belongings or properties. This also causes complication in Deeti‘s identity in
India‘s society as well. It seems that it will be impossible to Deeti to return to her homeland with her being casteless. To Huggan and Tiffin, dispossession and loss are something that occurs innately to the indigenous people because of the arrival of the colonial settlers.97 Even though the prospects of crossing Black Water and losing one‘s caste are terrifying to Deeti, she and Kalua decide that it is the only option for them to do. Ghosh shows how Deeti has the luxury to rebirth and reshape her new life as she leaves her old life that is controlled by the rising tide of opium poppy. Ghosh wants to show that in Deeti‘s case, the willingness to give up one‘s caste shows a sense of liberation. Through Deeti, Ghosh shows how his character dares to put an end to the injustice that oppresses her, even though it costs her tremendous changes by doing so—saying farewell to her homeland is one thing, and saying farewell to her daughter is another. However, it is not only
Deeti makes such choice. The other migrants, too, have their reasons why they make the decision to leave, and mostly, these migrants have the same reason as
Deeti. Instead of living in hunger and poverty, and being constantly oppressed by the colony that takes over their homeland, the prospect of leaving—although scary—is still promising.
97 Huggan and Tiffin, p.45
73
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Paulette also is included among the people on board of the Ibis. Ghosh presents Paulette as French orphan who was born and raised in India. Paulette‘s mother died when she gave birth to her. Paulette grows up inseparable with Jodu, in the care of Jodu‘s mother due to Paulette‘s mother‘s death. Paulette and Jodu practically grow up as siblings in Royal Botanical Gardens, Calcutta. Paulette‘s late father dedicated his life to work as a botanist in Royal Botanical Gardens.
Being intimately close to Jodu‘s mother from the moment she opens her eyes as a baby, Paulette develops a special bond with native Indian like Jodu and his mother. Jodu‘s mother, too, loves and takes care of Paulette like her own daughter, domesticating her feminine French name by calling her ‗Putli‘—which means ‗doll‘ (SOP, 65)—and later will be used by Paulette when she disguised herself as a native Indian woman.
In a way, Paulette is unique because:
…the first language she learnt was Bengali, and the first solid food she ate was a rice-and-dal kichiri cooked by Jodu‘s mother. In the matter of clothing she far preferred saris to pinafores –for shoes she had no patience at all, choosing, rather, to roam the Gardens in bare feet, like Jodu… for Jodu and his mother were not the only ones to be cut off from their own kind; Paulette and her father were perhaps even more so. Rarely, if ever, did white men or women visit their bungalow, and the Lamberts took no part in the busy whirl of Calcutta‘s English society. (SOP, 65) As shown in the quotation, Paulette‘s first language is Bengali since she is raised by Jodu‘s mother. She prefers Indian food, clothing, and manner than living like common white people living in India. Growing up, Paulette admits herself to be more a Bengali than French. Paulette finds herself experiencing uncertainty about her own self-identity.
74
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
In addition, Paulette‘s habits are also strengthened with the fact that the
Lamberts do not involve themselves with the ‗white‘ society in India, as seen in the previous quotation. To Jodu, Paulette and her father are always ―at odds with the other white sahibs‖ (SOP, 66). Paulette and her father have their reasons for not involving themselves with the ‗white‘ community in India
Obviously, there is an apparent contrast in the lives of both the colony and the colonized in India. The life of the indigenous people in India has been explained in the previous chapter. Meanwhile, the white merchants in India inhabit the verdant area of Calcutta, which is located in the bank of the Hooghly
River. In contrast with the way native Indian lives, the white community in India takes over the suburban area with their luxurious estates.
Just beyond the boundaries of Calcutta, to the west of the dockside neigborhoods of Kidderpore and Metia Bruz, lay a length of gently sloping bank that overlooked a wide sweep of the Hooghly River: this was the verdant suburb of Garden Reach, where the leading merchants of Calcutta had their country estates. (SOP, 97) These merchants live in enormous mansions which are modeled variedly according to their owner‘s taste. Each luxurious mansion shows the wealth owned by their occupants.
…The mansions that graced these estates were as varied as the owners‘ tastes would allow, some being modeled on the great manors of England and France, while others evoked the temples of classical Greece and Rome. The grounds of the estates were extensive enough to provide each mansion with a surrounding park, and these were, if anything, even more varied in design than the houses they enclosed—for the malis who tended the gardens, no less than the owner themselves, vied to outdo each other in the fancifulness of their plantings… (SOP, 97) However, of all the merchants living in the bank of Hooghly in Calcutta, it is Benjamin Burnham who is considered to bear the largest fortune of them all,
75
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
judged by his estates. Not only that Burnham owns the best looking garden in the neighborhood, his estates also offer the best view of the river‘s traffic. It is rather everyone‘s agreement that his wealth is second to no one nearby.
…But it was not by these extravagant extensions that the values of the properties were judged; it was rather by the view that each manse commanded—for a patch of garden, no matter how pretty, could not be held to materially affect the owner‘s prospects, while to be able to keep an eye on the comings-and-goings on the river had an obvious and direct bearing on the fortunes of all who were dependent on that traffic. By this criterion it was generally acknowledged that the estate of Benjamin Brightwell Burnham was second to none… (SOP, 97) In the case of the Lamberts, Paulette and her father do not live the way the people of the white community in India live. They choose to live in the consolation of their bungalow in Royal Botanical Gardens with Jodu and her mother. According to Paulette, her father refuses to live ―like most other
Europeans in the city.‖ (SOP, 132)
…Paulette‘s eyes misted over at the thought of those childhood years, when she and her father had lived with Jodu and Tantima, as though their bungalow were an island of innocence in sea of corruption. (SOP, 134) To Paulette and her father, living in the middle of the European society in India is similar to living in the middle of a corrupted society. Mr. Lambert‘s sole propose of coming to India is to work on his botany manuscript, not to take part on the exploitation of India with the other white people. Lambert seems to be against the way the fellow white people in the city treating the indigenous land and people.
Technically, skin color-wise, Paulette and her father are assumed the role of the colonizer. However, their intimate relationship with the nature and the indigenous people like Jodu and his mother complicates this situation. Mr. Lambert, too,
76
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
seems to oppose the idea of him and his daughter becoming a colonialist. By doing so, Paulette and her father seems to reflect what Albert Memmi considers as challenging the colonizer‘s very own existence by having the colonizers who actually rejects the idea of colonization itself.98 To Mr. Lambert, the use of the term ‗corruption‘ also probably refers to how the invasion of the European has corrupted the physical environment of India as well. Paulette and her father, along with Jodu and his mother stay within the innocence of their bungalow. Choosing not to get along with the fellow Europeans can be considered as a means of resistance itself. On the final days of his life, Paulette‘s father still does not want
Paulette to be associated with the European in India. He is against the environmental and human exploitation as a means to make a living. Mr. Lambert, on his visit to Baboo Nob Kissin, speaks on the behalf of the locals as a white sahib who is not interested in the exploitation of the nature.
…a child of Nature, that is what she is, my daughter Paulette…She has had n teacher other than myself, in the innocent tranquility of the Botanical Gardens. She has had no teacher other than myself, and has never worshipped at any altar except that of Nature; the trees have been her Scripture and the Earth her Revelation. She has not known anything but Love, Equality and Freedom: I have raised her to revel in that state of liberty that is Nature itself. If she remains here, in the colonies, most particularly in a city like this, where Europe hides its shame and its greed, all that awaits her is degradation: the whites of this town will tear her apart, like vultures and foxes, fighting over a corpse. (SOP, 134) Upon the death of Mr. Lambert, Mr. and Mr. Burnham take Paulette into their care. By being Paulette‘s benefactor, Mr. and Mrs. Burnham have rescued
98 Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (London: The Orion Press, Inc., 1974), 65.
77
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Paulette from living in Alipore where a poorhouse for destitute Eurasians and white minors is located (SOP, 126). However, Paulette wishes to run away from
Burnham‘s mansion after witnessing her benefactor, Mr. Burnham behaving disturbingly in their private lessons of Scriptures (SOP, 293).
There is an irony in how Ghosh places Paulette in the care of Benjamin
Burnham and his family. Being educated by her botanist father, and having a long line of botanists in the family, Paulette seems to be the most ecocentric among the characters in Sea of Poppies. Yet, after her father‘s death, Paulette finds herself in the care of the most anthropocentric character in the novel.
Choosing to disengage herself from the association with Mr. Burnham is
Paulette‘s way to keep herself as a figure that is raised by the tranquility of
Botanical Gardens. To leave from Burnham‘s mansion in Calcutta and disguise herself as a native Indian with her fluent Bengali are ways in which she refuses to be corrupted by the fellow white people or the Europeans. Through Paulette‘s camouflage among the soon-to-be indentured labors, Ghosh shows how a
European like Paulette can also live together with the low caste peasants. Paulette has lived with the principle of equality among one and another, which is taught by her father. Leaving the Burnhams, and the white community in India means refusing to be corrupted with her principle. Paulette believes in equality in between nature and people, also one people to another regardless of race differences. As she leaves India with the people on the Ibis, Paulette—without shaking—declares her fearlessness:
…On a boat of pilgrims, no one can lose caste and everyone is the same: it‘s like taking a boat to the temple of Jagannath, in Puri.
78
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
From now on, and forever afterwards, we will all be ship-siblings – jaházbhais and jaházbaens – to each other. There‘ll be no differences between us. (SOP, 348) Ghosh also presents resistance through the character Neel. Neel is also included in crossing the Black Water on the Ibis and also becomes an example of a person who loses his caste. Neel Rattan Halder is the zemindar of one of the oldest and most noted landowning family. Even though the Halders are not
Brahmins, this family religious background is orthodox Hindu and is ―zealous in the observance of the upper-class taboos and in following the usages of their class‖ (SOP, 39). To the Halders, the practice of caste and its rigid rules are something of significant matter. For this reason too, as the Raja or Rashkali zemindary, Neel‘s marriage is arranged to a daughter of another prominent landowning family (SOP, 40). Rashkali zemindary is very strict when it comes to caste.
Being the aristocrats among the society, a Raja and his family usually accept a great deal of advantages that cannot be owned by just anyone. One of the advantages is, of course, a tremendous wealth. Neel‘s father is also included among the Rajas who use the wealth and the social status for his own benefit.
Neel‘s father even does not hesitate to use his power in the society to take advantage of his own people. However, unlike his father or any previous Raja before him, Neel is different. He owns a different style of living.
It was true that Neel‘s own style of living was, for a scion of the Halder family, almost frugal: he managed to get by with a single two-horse carriage and made do with a modest wing of the family mansion. Much less a voluptuary than his father, he has no mistress other than Elokeshi – but on her, he lavished his affections without
79
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
stint, his relationship with his wife never progressed beyond the conventional performance on his husbandly duties. (SOP, 44) The quotation shows one of the examples of how Neel lives differently to his father. For a Raja, Neel lives a frugal life. He refuses to have numerous of mistresses like his late father did. Neel prevents himself from spending the zemindary‘s wealth for the similar reasons like his late father. He lives modestly and he does not keep hoards of mistresses other than Elokeshi.
In addition, Neel does not befriend Benjamin Burnham. To him, it is the worst mistake that his father has done. The association with Burnham is what causes the whole Rashkali zemindary to be in a serious financial danger. In the early settlement of East India Company in India, British gained the access to the indigenous society through the connection to the zemindars, since the Rajas are considered the respected people, being the owners of the lands with number of peasants as their dependants or workers.
The wealth owned by the zemindary, in the novel, is seen from how the
Raja makes his handsome profits by the association with the British colony. By investing in British merchants, the relationship between British and the zemindars is proved to be mutually beneficial. For the sake of wealth, the people of high caste appear to give the access to the colony to the land and the people of India. In
Neel‘s case, before his father‘s death, he even told Neel to invest more on
Benjamin Burnham. The investment on Burnham Bros. will be retuned doubled the amount.
…It was only in the final days of his life that the old zemindar informed his son that the family‘s financial survival depended on their dealings with Mr Benjamin Burnham; the more they invested
80
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
with him the better, for their silver would come back doubled in value. (SOP, 85) It is ironic how the high caste society is somehow the reason why the exploitation of nature and the exploitation of indigenous people in India are made possible. It seems like Ghosh wants to show the hypocrisy from within the indigenous society itself. Of course, the one who feels the most impact by this situation is the low caste peasants. Not only they are oppressed because of the caste-based system, they are also oppressed because of the settlement of the colony that is made possible by the respected people from within their own society.
However, in Neel‘s case, the investment in Mr. Burnham does not go as it is expected. Neel‘s late father ends up leaving an enormous amount of debt before his death. To settle this debt, Mr. Burnham confronted Neel to give his estates.
Considering the amount of people relies on his estate, Neel resists giving his property because the Rashkali land belongs not only to him, but also to his ancestors and his dependants.
Since Neel refuses to hand his land to Burnham, Neel is faced with a trial where English law is enforced upon him as a native Indian. Neel is the victim of injustice in his own homeland despite being the person of a high caste and highly respected in the society. Even someone like Neel cannot avoid himself from being dispossessed. In the face of the colony, Neel is stripped of the right of his own land. This shows how in the middle of the colonial setting, the experience of people being deprived of their right is indeed happen, be it legally claimed or
81
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
emotionally experienced.99 In the face of his own trial, Neel witnesses how the
British has taken control over the nobility like himself. It is as if British has become the ‗new Brahmin‘.
…In the course of his trial it had become almost laughably obvious to Neel that in this system of justice it was the English themselves – Mr Burnham and his ilk – who were exempt from the law as it applied to others: it was they who had become the world‘s new Brahmins. (SOP, 234) The court, then, sentenced Neel of seven years imprisonment in Mauritius.
Neel finds himself experiences the displacement as he is forced to be transported into the Mauritius. This is what brings him on board of the Ibis to cross the Black
Water on a journey of punishment. In case of Neel, Ghosh shows how even people of high caste is powerless in the face of the colony. Through the fall of
Neel, Ghosh shows how British has taken a complete control over all layers of the society in India, that there‘s no power left over their land for the natives.
Furthermore, the way in which Neel refuses to let his whole zemindary being taken by Burnham and his company is his way to show his resistance. From the beginning, Neel has chosen not to be involved further as he already has with
Burnham. Unlike his father, as a Raja, Neel refuses to follow his father‘s way of life. He chooses not to take advantages of his own people and determines to take care of his land, especially considering that hundreds of people technically live under his protection. As a consequence, Neel is stripped off of his caste when he is to be sent away across the sea on board of the Ibis. In the company of Ahfatt, a
99 Huggan and Tiffin, p.121
82
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
half-Chinese opium who shares the same fate as Neel as transported convict, Neel learns to live without caste boundaries. The peak of Neel‘s liberation is seen as he and Ahfatt managed to console each other in a selfless and delicate relationship without caste restriction. It shows how a balanced relationship between one human and another should be
…Gradually he became aware that there was an arm around his shoulder, holding him steady, as if in consolation: in this embrace there was more intimacy than he had ever known before, even with Elokeshi, and when a voice sounded in his ear, it was as if it were coming from within himself: ‗My name Lei Leong Fatt,‘ it said. ‗People call me Ah Fatt. Ah Fatt your friend.‘ (SOP, 335) Through Neel and Ahfatt‘s relationship, Ghosh wants to resist the idea of caste- based system which has created injustice among one people to another. Justice is achieved when balance is there.
The findings in this chapter show that resistance appears as a means to discover the environmental and social justice. Colonialism has stripped the indigenous people off of their rights on their own land. The connection to their nature is severed, broken, and scarred by the nature and human exploitation.
Environmental justice is nowhere to be found. In addition, colonial settlers who assume themselves to be more powerful over the indigenous community has damaged the life of the natives as well. In seeking for justice by fighting against colonial domination, the indigenous people also attempt to seek justice for their land. These attempts of achieving justice go hand in hand. Even though British made it almost impossible for the indigenous people to sound their protest, the attitude to fight back against the injustice still can be seen. By fighting, protesting, and raising their voice against the injustice that oppresses them and their land, the
83
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
natives show their effort to achieve what they deserve. The efforts that are pursued to resist the colonial domination are seen by protesting to the landlords, protesting to the opium factory, and sounding an opinion against the practice of monoculture.
When there is no space left for justice, migration through crossing the
Black Water to leave India is the only way left to fight against the exploitation caused by the authoritarian British colony. The similarity of journey experience on the Ibis is what brought the people together as a form of resistance against the injustice they experience in their own homeland. Ghosh shows that a balanced relationship is possible to be achieved even if it costs the natives to leave their homeland. Balanced relationship where no strong counterpart oppresses the weak one, it is the ideal depiction of environmental and social justice. Even though, in the end of the story, the nature cannot return to its pristine condition, the possibility of having a balanced and harmonious relationship somewhere is left open. Considering that the characters in the novel migrate to serve as workers in
British plantations, there is always a possibility of this balanced and harmonious relationship is, again, disturbed by the inequality of power. However, the most important thing to note is that even in a short amount of time, through the social status changes the characters experience by migrating on board of the Ibis, they have discovered justice where no caste or race differences matters.
84
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
The previous chapters attempt to answer the research questions raised in the first chapter. The third and fourth chapter answer to the research questions number one and two, respectively. This chapter, the last chapter, offers the conclusion to summarize the previous chapters.
This thesis analyzes the effect of the colonization on the environment and the indigenous people. Somewhere in between the colonial upheaval, injustice happened in the form of nature and human exploitation. To regain the balance between nature and people that has been scarred by the colonialism, resistance is needed.
The analysis of this thesis is divided into two problems formulation. The first is the analysis of the effect of colonialism on the nature and the people. The second is the analysis of resistance as a means to discover the environmental and social justice. The novel used in this investigation is Sea of Poppies (2008) by
Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. The topic raised by this novel is relevant to the current environmental and social justice.
This thesis responds to the matter of environmental crisis as a serious threat for the global society. Ironically, the environmental crisis is caused by none other than by human. Human‘s oppressive attitude towards the nature has long been a threat for earth‘s life support system. The commitment for literature to be involved in raising awareness to save the environment is taken seriously. A work
85
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
of literature that shows commitment to voice the condition of the nature is chosen to voice the consequence of human and nature problematic relationship.
Sea of Poppies offers Ghosh‘s interesting take in the intersection between colonialism and environmentalism in relation with human and nature relationship, with an additional concern on justice. The setting used in this novel is the nineteenth-century British opium monopoly in India. This novel brings the image of India being taken over by British colonialism. The characters in this novel are diverse, which capture the different layers of the society in colonial India.
The arrival of the colony has disrupted the tranquility of nature. Human‘s abusive relationship with nature is reflected in Sea of Poppies through colonial exploitation and the exploitation of the nature. The arrival of the colony has created havoc in the relationship between the nature and human. As a natural reaction of the colonial consequences, the attitude of fighting back is attempted by the characters in the novel to gain a balanced relationship between human and nature.
This thesis aims to present a particular perspective in reading Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies. The discussion is aimed to speak for the exploited nature and indigenous society in the face of a colonial oppression. Sea of Poppies provides the insight from within the colonized land and people about how colonization becomes the justification to exploit the land and human in a large scale for a long period of time.
86
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
A. Significance and Achievement
This study uses postcolonial ecocriticism as the framework of the analysis.
Some previous studies that examine Ghosh‘s writings have been reviewed to help the analysis of Sea of Poppies. Studies that are conducted on Ghosh‘s Sea of
Poppies still focus on the theme of hierarchy and the social classes found within the novel. Looking from the perspective of the environmental themes, the studies on Ghosh‘s works that have been conducted still speak around the issue of the importance of the nature, and also the relationship between human, animal and their environment. This thesis pursues a different perspective for Ghosh‘s Sea of
Poppies. Postcolonial ecocriticism is used to give a particular issue on looking at human and the non-human nature relationship in the colonial setting. Postcolonial ecocriticism, too, is used to see how resistance is portrayed in the novel as an effort to discover environmental and social justice.
As separated fields, both ecocriticism and postcolonialism has different commitments towards the issues both fields bring in the study of literature.
However, mainstream ecocriticism alone is considered not ‗enough‘ to talk about the environmental issue that occurs in the land where colonialism once took place.
Mainstream ecocriticism appears to be obsessed with the idea of a pure environment, something that simply does not exist in the ex-colonial environment where the land and people are deeply scarred by the colonial experience.
Therefore, mainstream ecocriticism alone is not enough to uncover the conflict within the society that is reflected in Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies. Traditionally, the works of Indian author like Ghosh would be placed within the scope of
87
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
postcolonial literature rather than the environmental literature. However, being categorized as a postcolonial writer, does not mean Ghosh has nothing to say about the issue of environment. Therefore, by bringing together the issue of postcolonialism and ecocriticism through under postcolonial ecocriticism, is considered more effective to response to the readings of books like Ghosh‘s.
The commitment to find out the effect of human and nature relationship is also one of postcolonial ecocriticism‘s attentions. Human and nature relationship that tends to be abusive from the human‘s side is claimed to be the long cause of the existing environmental crisis. For a long time, human has dominated the nature, taking it for granted in the name of human‘s mastery over the nature. This notion, as noted by Huggan and Tiffin, becomes even more complex in the middle of colonial settings. With the colony being the strongest power in the colonized land, the colonial oppression appears through double consciousness: the oppression of the indigenous land and people. The colony‘s justification of this double consciousness of exploitation is based on the perception that the indigenous land and people are being underused and uncivilized, respectively.
Colonial setting is a place where anthropocentrism has moved beyond human and nature relationship because it relates to colonialism or imperialism where the oppression over the weaker colonized people is naturalized.
With the dispossession of environmental and social justice through colonial exploitation, Grewe-Volpp suggests that resistance is an obvious reaction. This relates to the other postcolonial ecocriticism‘s claim which is ―there is no social justice without environmental justice‖. As previously mentioned about
88
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
human and nature relationship in colonial setting, the colonial and environmental oppression go hand in hand. Therefore, the effort to put an end to one side of the oppression should liberate the other one as well. The resistance can manifest in a lot of ways, as long as it shows the indigenous people determination to speak and act against colonial and environmental exploitation. Achieving social and environmental justice by resisting does not always mean to return to the environment‘s pristine condition pre-colonial time. What is being sought is the creation of a change in terms of human and nature relationship that is more balanced in all aspect.
The first analysis of this thesis focuses on the effect of the colonization on the nature and the people in Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies. The effect of the colonization mirrors the consequence of human and nature relationship in the dialogue with colonialism. The effect on the people here refers to the native
Indian characters in the book that are directly affected by the colonialism.
Nature plays an important role in Sea of Poppies. Deeti, one of the characters relies a lot on the nature. Deeti, the characters who portrays the peasants, depends on the nature because she makes a living out of poppy farming.
Therefore, nature is day to day working place for her. In addition, she also depends on the nature in her everyday life. For instance, the need of food, drink, and bathing is supplied by nature. Nature does not only play a huge role in Deeti‘s life by providing for her, but it also becomes a part of her spiritual life. It was nature that gives her the sight of the Ibis, a ship that will change her life forever.
89
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Through Deeti, Ghosh wants to show how before the colonialism, nature and people live together in a harmonious symbiotic relationship.
The nature and the indigenous people of India are affected by colonialism when it comes into the picture. Since the establishment of British exclusive monopoly of opium in India by the late 18th century, British colony has imposed monoculture poppies cultivation to raise the opium production in India. Poppies take over the land in India, and farmers are no longer planting crops that are used to sustain their lives because of British‘s unstoppable greed in opium cultivation.
The cultivation of poppies in India is aimed to serve British and their demands only. Since the landscape has lost its ―green‖, a lot of changes happen to the environment that is ruled by flowers. Nature has lost biodiversity for being taken entirely by the poppy cultivation. Numerous populations of animals are affected, by it too. The presence of opium factory in the middle of the environment, too, has caused serious damage in the ecosystem.
The exploitation of the nature goes altogether with the exploitation of the indigenous people. In the colonial setting, both ethics of exploitation works hand in hand. The exploitation of the nature through colonization has several impacts to the people in the book. The impacts include starvation and poverty. The indigenous people are forced to struggle under the complication of the cultivation of the cash crop poppy flowers. Prior to the cultivation of poppies, the peasants are forced to sign a contract and they are provided with cash advancement to agree to cultivate none other than poppies to serve the British. The application of the debt system on the indigenous people by the British is turned out to be the
90
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
most oppressive, because not only that British has a complete control over the people, they also secretly have the power to dispossess the peasants of their belonging when they do not meet the factory‘s monthly demand of opium.
The second part of the analysis is aimed to see how resistance is portrayed as a means to discover the environmental and social justice. In need of justice, there is a form of resistance found in the story. Even though British made it almost impossible for the indigenous people to sound their protest, there is still an attitude of fighting back. The indigenous people have shown the way they fight, protest, and raise their voice against the injustice that oppresses them and their land. Protesting to the landlords, protesting to the opium factory, and sounding an opinion against the practice of monoculture, are the way early resistance is formed.
When there is no space left for justice, migration by crossing the Black
Water to leave their terribly scarred homeland is the only way left to fight against the exploitation caused by the authoritarian colonialism. The similarity of journey on the Ibis is what brought the people together as a form of resistance against the injustice on their homeland and fellow natives. Deeti, whose life has been controlled by the opium is given a brand new chance, a rebirth. In choosing to run away with Kalua, Ghosh shows that Deeti has resisted against the oppression that bounds her life. Paulette is included in the list of people who resist too. Paulette‘s closeness to the nature and the culture of India has caused her to refuse being in between the white society of Calcutta who makes a living out of colonizing the others. By choosing not to associate herself with the ‗whites‘, Paulette shows his
91
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
strong belief in the equality among human and nature, also one human to another.
Ghosh shows that a balanced relationship is possible to be achieved. Balanced relationship where no strong counterpart oppresses the weak one is the ideal depiction of environmental and social justice. For instance, Ghosh shows how the relationship of the high caste Neel Halder and the ‗filthy‘ opium addict foreigner
Ahfatt evolves throughout the book. There is no better example to show a balanced relationship other than through this example.
In Sea of Poppies, we see that it is impossible to return to the pristine condition of the nature. Being deeply affected by the colonialism has changed the nature and the colonized community into an irreversible situation. Justice is earned on the Ibis where no one oppresses anyone. The relationship between one people to his or her surrounding is in a harmony. Through migration, a journey of crossing the Black Water where caste-bound society is disestablished, people find a balance between them and their nature, also with the fellow migrants.
B. Relevance
The problems that are raised in this thesis have contributed to different issues that are related to today‘s environmental and social issues. Ghosh‘s Sea of
Poppies is indeed set in the in the colonial India, but that does not necessarily mean that this book is not relevant to today‘s problems.
First of all, Sea of Poppies takes a strong position in talking about the relationship between human and nature. The novel reveals that in whatever the case is, a dominating, exploitative relationship between human and nature will affect very negatively. In whatever the case is—colonization or not—taking the
92
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
nature for granted is not right. Human and nature should, all in all, live in a balanced and healthy relationship. This speaks to today‘s environmental crisis where the earth is now taking serious consequences from human‘s doing. Raising awareness of creating a more balanced relationship is needed. Ethic of exploitation towards the nature and its non-human inhabitants, including animals and plants, needs to stop.
Sea of Poppies, too, shows an issue related to the environment that is rarely seen in other literary works. Sea of Poppies especially takes the issue of monoculture cultivation as one of its important theme. Particularly in Indonesia, monoculture cultivation is now a very alarming issue. This speaks to palm oil monoculture controversy in some places in Indonesia, more specifically in
Borneo. The large scale cultivation of palm oil in Borneo has endangered and devastated the rain forest ecosystem. It is also linked to human rights abuses of the local workers by massive international companies.100 Monoculture cultivation, without a doubt, gives a huge profit, especially when it is manifested in the cultivation of cash crops. However, the most important thing to remember is, a long term and vast scale of monoculture has a really serious risk. The biggest threat of it is the death of biodiversity. In some cases and some places, monoculture is still practiced because of the prospect of gaining as much profit as
100 Jocelyn C. Zuckerman, ―The Palm Oil Effect‖, 5 Sep 2017. Accessed 26 Nov 2017. Available from Vogue. < https://www.vogue.com/projects/13535833/palm-oil-controversy- beauty-products-ingredient-sourcing-deforestation-climate-change/>
93
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
possible. Then again, what we must remember is that the earth needs biodiversity to survive.
The other issue that is raised by Sea of Poppies is the matter of justice.
Both environmental justice and social justice are two important matters. By not oppressing the nature and promoting a more balanced life between human and nature, also with fellow human, a more positive light of the human to human and human to nature relationship is possible to be achieved. The exploitation of the nature or human exploitation of any kind are supposed to be put to end.
Finally, this thesis is hoped to be able to offer a contribution to the talk of human and nature relationship in the dialogue of ecocriticism and postcolonialism. The relationship between human and nature in any kind of setting is open for interpretation and investigation. Therefore, more contribution should be made by the future literary researchers in developing this matter, to enrich not only postcolonial ecocriticism field, but also literary studies in general.
In addition, Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies is still opened to more interpretation.
Therefore, a postcolonial reading or even a feminist reading on the novel is encouraged for future researchers.
94
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ahuja, Ravi. ―Capital at Sea, Shaitan Below Decks? A Note on Global Narratives, Narrow Spaces, and the Limits of Experience.‖ History of the Present 2.1 (2012): 78-85. Web. 18 Oct 2016.
Alexander, S. and P. Saravanan. ―The Quintessence of Ecology in Amitav Ghosh‘s The Hungry Tide‖ Literary Quest 1.11 (2015): 60-67. Web. 10 Jan 2017.
Banerjee, Mita. ―Ecocriticism and Postcolonial Studies.‖ In Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology, ed. Hubert Zapf. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016. Print.
Batra, Kanika. ―City Botany: Reading Urban Ecologies in China through Amitav Ghosh‘s River of Smoke.‖ Narrative 21.3 (2013): 322-332. Web. 7 Sept 2017.
Baumgarten, Murray. ―Love and Figure/Ground: Reading Amitav Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies.‖ Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 12.2 (2014): 375-387. Web. 7 Sept 2017.
Buell, Lawrence. ―Ecocriticism: Some Emerging Trends.‖ Qui Parle 19.2 (2011): 87-115. Web. 15 Jan 2017.
______. ―Toxic Discourse.‖ Critical Inquiry 24.3 (1998): 639-665. Web. 29 Nov 2016.
Burton, Antoinette. ―Amitav Ghosh‘s World Histories from Below.‖ History of the Present 2.1 (2012): 71-77. Web. 18 Oct 2016.
Caste, Colonialism and a ‗Sea of Poppies‘. NPR, 9 Nov 2008. Web. Accessed 7 Sept 2017.
Chandar, K.M. ―Journey to the Antique Land of Poppies: Voyage as Discovery in Amitav Ghosh‘s ―Sea of Poppies‖.‖ Indian Literature 54.4 (2010): 181- 192. Web. 18 Oct 2016.
Cilano, Cara and Elizabeth DeLoughrey. ―Against Authenticity: Global Knowledges and Postcolonial Ecocriticism.‖ Interdisciplinary Studies in
95
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Literature and Environment 14.1 (2007): 71-87. Web. 16 Aug 2017.
DeLoughrey, Elizabeth and George B. Handley. Introduction to Postcolonial Ecologies: Literature of the Environment, eds. Elizabeth DeLoughrey and George B. Handley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.
Farooqui, Amar. ―Colonialism and Competing Addictions: Morphine Content as Historical Factor.‖ Social Scientist 32.5/6 (2004): 21-32. Web. 4 Aug 2017.
Fletcher, Lisa. ―Reading the Postcolonial Island in Amitav Ghosh‘s The Hungry Tide.‖ Island Studies Journal 6.1 (2011): 3-16. Web. 7 Sept 2017.
Gangopadhyay, Rudrani. ―Finding Oneself On Board the Ibis in Amitav Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies.‖ WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 45.1&2 (2017): 55-64. Web. 21 Jul 2017.
Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print.
Ghosh, Amitav. ―Confluence and Crossroads: Europe and the Fate of the Earth‖. Web. Accessed 29 Nov 2016.
______. ―Folly in the Sundarbans‖. Web. Accessed 29 Nov 2016.
______. ―Of Fanas and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Language of The Age of Sail.‖ Economic and Political Weekly 43-25 (2008): 56-62. Web. 18 Oct 2016.
______. Sea of Poppies. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. Print.
______. The Glass Palace. New York: Penguin Books Ltd, 2000. Print.
Glotfelty, Cheryll. Introduction to The Ecocriticism Reader, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1996. Print.
Grewe-Volpp, Christa. ―No Environmental Justice Without Social Justice: A Green Postcolonialist Reading of Paul Marshal‘s The Chosen Place, the Timeless People.‖ In Literature, Ecology, Ethics: Recent Trends in Ecocriticism, eds. Timo Muller and Michael Sauter. Heidelberg: Universitatverlag, 2012. Print.
96
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Hasan, Nazia. ―Tracing the Strong Green Streaks in the Novels of Amitav Ghosh: An Eco-critical Reading‖ Indian Literature 57.4 (2013): 182-193. Web. 10 Jan 2017.
Hawley, John C. Contemporary Indian Writer in English: Amitav Ghosh. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd., 2005. PDF.
Heise, Ursula K. ―Ecocriticism and the Transnational Turn in American Studies.‖ American Literary History 20.1 (2008): 381-404. Web. 16 Aug 2017.
Hofmeyr, Isabel. ―Universalizing the Indian Ocean.‖ PMLA 125.3 (2010): 721- 729. Web. 18 Oct 2016.
Huggan, Graham. ―Postcolonial ecocriticism and the limits of Green Romanticism.‖ Journal of Postcolonial Writing 45.1 (2009): 3-14. Web. 16 Aug 2017.
Huggan, Graham and Helen Tiffin. ―Green Postcolonialism.‖ Interventions 9.1 (2007): 1-11. Web. 16 Aug 2017.
______. Postcolonial Ecocrticism: Literature, Animals, Environment. New York: Routledge, 2010. Print.
Huttunen, Tuomas. ―Ethics, Language, and the Writing of Amitav Ghosh.‖ Cross / Cultures 117 (2009): 335-384, 399. Web. 7 Sept 2017.
Jones, Stephanie. ―A Novel Genre: Polylingualism and Magical Realism in Amitav Ghosh‘s ―The Circle of Reason‖.‖ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 66.3 (2003): 431-441. Web. 10 Jan 2017.
Levy, Arieh and Judith Milo. ―Genetics and Breeding of Papaver somniferum.‖ In Poppy: The Genus Papaver, ed. Jenõ Bernáth. Amsterdam: OPA, 1998. PDF.
Manes, Christopher. ―Nature and Silence.‖ In The Ecocriticism Reader, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1996. Print.
Markovits, Claude. ―The Political Economy of OpiumSmuggling in Early Nineteeth Century India: Leakage or Resistance?‖ Modern Asian Studies 43.1 (2009): 89-111. Web. 4 Aug 2017.
97
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized. London: The Orion Press, Inc., 1974. PDF.
Mukherjee, Upamanyu Pablo. Postcolonial Environments: Nature, Culture, and the Contemporary Indian Novel in English. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Print.
Murphy, Patrick D. ―Community Resilience and the Cosmopolitan Role in the Environmental Challenge-Response Novels of Ghosh, Grace, and Sinha.‖ Comparative Literature Studies 50.1 (2013): 148-168. Web. 7 Sept 2017.
Nayar, Pramod K. ―The Postcolonial Uncanny: The Politics of Dispossession in Amitav Ghosh‘s ―The Hungry Tide‖.‖ College Literature 37.4 (2010): 88- 119. Web. 10 Jan 2017.
Nixon, Rob. ―Environmentalism and Postcolonialism.‖ In Ecocriticism: The Essential Reader, ed. Ken Hiltner. New York: Routledge, 2015. Print.
Pati, Madhusmita and Kailash Nath. ―COULD DISPLACED MARGINALS CO- EXIST WITH HUNGRY TIGERS? A LYOTARDIAN READING OF AMITAV GHOSH‘S THE HUNGRY TIDE.‖ International Journal of Arts and Sciences 5.6 (2012): 641-654. Web. 7 Sept 2017.
Principles of Environmental Justice. Web. Accessed 10 Jan 2017.
Reed, T. V. ―Toxic Colonialism, Environmental Justice, and Native Resistance in Silko‘s Almanac of the Dead‖ MELUS 34.2 (2009): 25-42. Web. 10 Jan 2017.
Richards, John F. ―Opium and the British Indian Empire: The Royal Commission of 1895.‖ Modern Asian Studies 36.2 (2002): 375-420. Web. 4 Aug 2017.
Roos, Bonnie and Alex Hunt. ―Systems and Secrecy: Postcolonial Ecocriticism and Ghosh‘s The Calcutta Chromosome.‖ In The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Environment, ed. Louise Wrestling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. PDF.
Saumini, P. ―Subaltern Consciousness in Amitav Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies.‖ The Dawn Journal 4.1 (2015): 1109-1114. Web. 18 Oct 2016.
Shinn, Christopher A. ―On Machines and Mosquitoes: Neuroscience, Bodies, and Cyborgs in Amitav Ghosh‘s ―The Calcutta Chromosome‖.‖ MELUS 33.4
98
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
(2008): 145-166. Web. 10 Jan 2017.
Sen, Nandini C. ―The Creation of Diaspora and its Historical Significance: A Study of Amitav Ghosh‘s ‗Sea of Poppies‘.‖ Diaspora Studies 5.2 (2012): 197-214. Web. 7 Sept 2017.
Steinwand, Jonathan. ―What the Whales Would Tell Us: Cetacean Communication in Novels by WIti Ihimaera, Linda Hogan, Zakes Mda, and Amitav Ghosh.‖ In Postcolonial Ecologies: Literature of the Environment, eds. Elizabeth DeLoughrey and George B. Handley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.
Su, John J. ―Amitav Ghosh and the Aesthetic Turn in Postcolonial Studies.‖ Journal of Modern Literature 34.3 (2011): 65-86. Web. 11 Feb 2017.
White Jr., Lynn. ―The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.‖ In The Ecocriticism Reader, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1996. Print.
Zuckerman, Jocelyn C. ―The Palm Oil Effect‖. Vogue, 5 Sep 2017. Web. Accessed 26 Nov 2017.
99