Politics of Land and Environmental Colonialism in Amitav Ghosh’s "The Living Mountain" (2022) Contextualizing the Global South

Abstract

Amitav Ghosh’s The Living Mountain (2022) exposes the politics of land and environmental colonialism, emphasizing how extractive capitalism and colonial legacies perpetuate ecological and social violence in the Global South. This research article examines Ghosh’s fable as a narrative intervention that contextualizes the exploitation of Indigenous lands, resource extraction, and climate injustice within frameworks of (neo)colonial domination. Historically, colonial regimes have consistently concealed the violent aspects of their past, while the land itself has become the essential location for the recovery and study of postcolonial history. By analyzing the fable’s depiction of corporate greed, state complicity, and Indigenous resistance, the study highlights how environmental colonialism operates through dispossession, ecological degradation, and epistemic erasure. Ghosh’s work underscores the intersections of capitalism and colonialism, revealing how marginalized communities in the Global South bear the brunt of environmental crises while being excluded from decision-making processes. The fable’s allegorical engagement with real-world issues—such as deforestation, militarized conservation, and climate displacement—critiques global power asymmetries. Drawing on postcolonial ecocriticism and political ecology, this article argues that The Living Mountain foregrounds the urgent need for decolonial environmental justice, centering Indigenous knowledge and resistance. Ultimately, Ghosh’s narrative challenges hegemonic discourses of development and sustainability, calling for an equitable reimagining of human–environment relationships in the Anthropocene.