To acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh, the Mountain Echoes Festival seems like an extension of his recent nonfiction book “The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable”.
Ghosh will speak about the impact of climate change at the seventh edition of the annual literary festival, an initiative of the India Bhutan Foundation, to be held in Bhutan from August 25-28.
Hoping to confront the most important and urgent challenge of the times, the 59-year-old writer intends to ask the audience, “Will our future generations, standing in a rising pool of swirling waters, not beseech us with the question: ‘Why didn’t you do something?’”
Incidentally, Ghosh is the first writer-in-residence who spent four days at the President’s Estate in New Delhi last month as guest of President Pranab Mukherjee under a residency programme. The programme was started three years ago when the President decided to host outstanding writers, artistes and scholars, wherein they are accommodated in guesthouses on the estate and can take in the art and the history of the place and dine out of the President’s kitchen gardens.
Ghosh is an award-winning author and essayist whose books include “The Circle of Reason”, “The Shadow Lines”, “The Calcutta Chromosome”, “The Glass Palace”, “The Hungry Tide” and the Ibis trilogy — “Sea of Poppies”, “River of Smoke” and “Flood of Fire”.
Of late the writer has been speaking extensively on environment and climate change. In his book, he poses the question: “Why has modern literature shied away from confronting climate change?” Suggesting there’s a conspiracy of silence surrounding it, he asks: “Why is it writers, who are very aware of what’s happening in the world around them are unable to write about this one phenomenon, which is actually a meta-phenomenon, within which every other phenomenon is encased?”
“Take the case of Indian fiction. Writers are really proud of being political. And yet, this thing, which is perhaps much more important than any day-to-day politics, they are completely, as it were, indifferent to,” he said.
Ghosh feels that efforts to improve energy efficiency or substituting dirty fuels by solar or wind energy will bring about only incremental benefits. He says there are studies to show that energy efficiency always leads to greater consumption. The issue of climate change cannot be solved by energy efficiency measures and it has to be solved by addressing questions of consumption. And this is the question that is not allowed being raised within the discourse.
A landmark book on climate change, “The Great Derangement” says a lot for a subject that has generated an ocean of verbiage. The “derangement” pertains to mismatch between the nature of the problem and the indifferent response to it.
Ghosh spoke to Weekend Review about his book, the issue of climate change and why he’s not an activist. Excerpts:
What do you look forward to at literary festivals such as Mountain Echoes that support your call to action for climate change issues?
I look forward to discussing my ideas with others who are interested in the subject. As for my book, it is not so much a call to action as an attempt to address the challenges that climate change poses to contemporary art and literature. Modern society has proved to be disastrously profligate with the Earth’s resources. Whether it can change is a moot question that bothers me.
What are your expectations from writers attending such festivals?
Climate change does not receive much attention in modern literature and writers are not focusing on this issue of vital importance. These are exactly the concerns I address at such meets.
While putting the three sections — literary theory, historical writings and political treatise — in your book, did you have a reader in mind?
No, having a reader in mind stopped a long time ago. Writers in my circumstances are in a peculiar position — our books are read in places where we cannot even imagine what our readers are like. And just as readers do not go to writers thinking he or she will tell me what to read, writers too create their own readership. There are certain genres though in fiction that are largely reader driven, catering to readers’ tastes.
Do you think environmentalism and conservation stand a much better chance of resonating with the millennial generation?
I don’t think the millennial generation can be blamed for the lack of movement on climate change. It is their elders who have failed to confront the issue.
Is climate change being overshadowed in the public consciousness?
It is certainly true that climate change hardly figures in the public consciousness in India, even for those who have suffered directly.
Do you believe art too can serve a larger purpose of conservation?
These concerns do exist in my mind, but I am not one to say that art exists to serve a purpose of some kind. It is just the case that art has not responded to climate change, even as it has been responding to issues such as war, social justice, identity and gender issues.
Can poor or emerging nations afford environment-friendly initiatives?
The fact is poor countries cannot at all afford to neglect the impacts of climate change that are already upon us. Take for instance the scenarios in cities such as Mumbai and Chennai. We see that excess rainfall and floods create huge catastrophes in these cities. On the other hand, we witnessed the massive drought in central India. Thousands of people were compelled to leave Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh state and migrated to Delhi and Mumbai. While it took a toll on these already crowded cities, it is a catastrophe for the drought-ridden areas as well, because people who deal in agriculture and farming, have deserted it. So, how can we afford to neglect these impacts?
There is a belief among Indians that the well-off will be spared such problems.
Yes, this misplaced belief is not just among the well-off, but also the middle class people. In cities such as Delhi, Gurgaon, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Chennai those affected were the rich and powerful and the middle class.
Would it be correct to refer to you as an environmentalist?
I cannot describe myself as an environmentalist, for environmentalists are activists and I am not like that. Even though I have reported on various environmental issues and have been interested in these causes, I will totally misrepresent myself if I were to call myself an activist. Also, there is a difference between climate change and environment in general. While environment talks about specific issues and impacts on a particular landscape, climate change is something much more enormous and talks about consequences that we will have to suffer.
Nilima Pathak is a journalist based in New Delhi.
