Animal’s
People: An
Ecocritical Study through Memory, Trauma and Disaster
Mousumi Paul,
Assistant Professor of English and
Humanities,
Swami Vivekananda Institute of Science
& Technology,
Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
Abstract: Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People is a collective memory of the repercussion of a
severe industrial catastrophe caused by the Bhopal disaster in 1984.The
narrative of the novel is centered round Animal, an adolescent boy who
describes “that night” (industrial catastrophe caused by Bhopal Gas tragedy) to
the foreign journalists who visit Khaufpur to write about the victims of the
disaster. The excruciatingly traumatic memories of that night recorded in
several tapes by the titular character represent contamination, industry-driven
bio-disaster, uneven ecological development and so on. The writer here is
introspecting the future of our country by memorizing the past incidents of
claustrophobic sickness, filth, environmental degradation, industrial pollution
through the eyes of Animal. Mankind is conspicuously committing ecocide to make
their lives more comfortable and easy-going but any developments without
environmental research will certainly have a negative impact on the quality of
our life and our surroundings too. Indra Sinha has particularly pointed out the
toxic gas tragedy by which people lost their loved ones and met extreme
poverty. Not only the living beings, but also the entire ecosystem of the area
was completely shattered and battered by such unimaginable disaster of that
unforgettable night. This paper aims to give voice to the voiceless so that
each person living on this earth can realize the extreme need of preserving and
nurturing our nature to have an ecological balance through which we can make a
world worth living.
Keywords: ecocide trauma,
memory, ecology, industrial development.
Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People is
a collective memory of the repercussion of a severe industrial catastrophe
caused by the Bhopal disaster in 1984.The narrative of the novel is centred
round Animal, an adolescent boy who describes “that night” (industrial
catastrophe caused by Bhopal Gas tragedy) to the foreign journalists who visit
khaufpur to write about the victims of the disaster. The excruciatingly
traumatic memories of that night recorded in several tapes by the titular
character represent contamination, industry-driven bio-disaster, uneven
ecological development and so on. The writer here is introspecting the future
of our country by memorizing the past incidents of claustrophobic sickness,
filth, environmental degradation, industrial pollution through the eyes of
Animal. Mankind is conspicuously committing ecocide to make their lives more
comfortable and easy-going but any developments without environmental research
will certainly have a negative impact on the quality of our life and our
surroundings too. Indra Sinha has particularly pointed out the toxic gas
tragedy by which people lost their loved ones and met extreme poverty. Not only
the living beings, but also the entire ecosystem of the area was completely
shattered and battered by such unimaginable disaster of that unforgettable
night. This paper aims to give voice to the voiceless so that each person
living on this earth can realize the extreme need of preserving and nurturing
our nature to have an ecological balance through which we can make a world
worth living. Indra Sinha's Animal's People (2007) is a haunting novel
based on the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy, analyzing the long-term ecological impact
of industrial catastrophe on the environment and marginalized lives.
In Animal’s People, Indra Sinha offers a poignant critique of environmental injustice and
political corruption through the experiences of the protagonist, Animal, and
the community of Khaufpur. The novel, inspired by the real-life Bhopal gas
tragedy, delves into the aftermath of a catastrophic industrial disaster and
its enduring impact on marginalized communities. One of the most striking passages that encapsulate the
novel's political ecocritical stance is Animal's reflection on the hollow
rhetoric of rights and justice:
I said, many books have been written about
this place, not one has changed anything for the better, how will yours be
different? You will bleat like all the rest. You’ll talk of rights, law,
justice. Those words sound the same in my mouth as in yours but they don’t mean
the same, Zafar says such words are like shadows the moon makes in the
Kampani’s factory, always changing shape. On that night it was poison, now it’s
words that are choking us.” (Sinha 2)
This quote underscores the novel's central themes: the disillusionment
with institutional promises, the enduring suffering caused by environmental
disasters, and the complicity of political systems in perpetuating injustice. Through
Animal's voice, Sinha critiques the superficial engagement of outsiders and the
failure of legal and political mechanisms to deliver meaningful change. The novel powerfully exposes how
systemic oppression, structural violence, capitalist exploitation, and
postcolonial hierarchies strip individuals of their humanity, especially the
most marginalized. “For his sort we are not really people. We don’t have names. We flit in
crowds at the corner of his eye. Extras we’re, in his movie.”
(Tape 2, p. 9). In this line, Animal reflects on how
outsiders—journalists, corporate people, or officials—perceive the survivors of
Khaufpur. By stating "we are not really people," he emphasizes how
they’ve been reduced to faceless extras, stripped of identity, agency, and
humanity. The lack of names further depersonalizes them—ordinary victims made
invisible within someone else’s narrative.
A pertinent theoretical perspective that supports the
political ecocriticism evident in Indra Sinha's Animal’s People comes from Rob Nixon's concept of
"slow violence". In Animal’s
People, Sinha vividly portrays this "slow violence" through the
lingering effects of the chemical disaster in Khaufpur. The novel delves into
the prolonged suffering of the community, the environmental degradation, and
the systemic neglect by both governmental and corporate entities. By focusing
on the lived experiences of the victims, Sinha amplifies the often-overlooked
consequences of environmental catastrophes, aligning with Nixon's call to bring
such narratives to the forefront. Furthermore, the novel critiques the
complicity of political structures in perpetuating environmental injustices. Zafar's
activism against the corrupt government and the Kampani underscores the
intersection of environmental degradation with political and economic power
dynamics. This aligns with the broader themes of political ecocriticism, which
examines how environmental issues are intertwined with societal structures and
power relations. This essay presents an Environmental Justice reading of Indra
Sinha's Animal's People, highlighting the way the novel reveals the
catastrophic effect of ecological violence on vulnerable communities. The novel
interweaves memory, trauma, and catastrophe to critique structural industrial
irresponsibility and corporate plunder. The body-to-world experiences of the
protagonist, Animal, represent the material and social cost of slow violence.
This paper contends that Sinha's account eschews anthropocentric paradigms and
foregrounds the moral obligation of environmental justice by placing the voices
of the marginalized at the forefront.
This ecocritical reading investigates how
the novel uses memory, trauma, and catastrophe in order to expose systemic
ecological violence, interpret posthuman interconnectivities, and call for
environmental justice. Through decentering the anthropocentric eye and
embracing a relational understanding of humans, nonhumans, and nature, Sinha's
narrative presents an engaging critique of industrial capitalism and the
catastrophic consequences that ensue. Memory in *Animal's People* is individual
and collective testimony to eco-violence. The fractured narrative form of the
novel, oscillating between past and present, emphasizes the irreversibility of
environmental trauma. Nixon (2011) labels this slow violence, whereby
environmental damage unfolds slowly, mostly out of sight (Nixon, 2011, p. 2). "The
earth remembers what they tried to forget" (Sinha, 2007, p. 212). Kampani
Corporation's tragedy is not seen as a singular occurrence but as one of a
series of corporate callousness and institutionalized repression. In Animal’s
People, the Kampani Corporation’s disaster transcends the narrative of a
one-time industrial accident. It is portrayed as part of a systemic pattern of
corporate exploitation and neglect. In Animal's People, Kampani
Corporation's tragedy is more than a story of a single industrial mishap. It is
presented as part of a systemic sequence of corporate neglect and exploitation.
The disaster is not singular; instead, it is representative of a history of
environmental racism in which marginalized peoples, such as those in Khaufpur,
experience industrial greed without responsibility. The novel highlights
institutionalized repression as government and corporate complicity strive to
silence victims, withhold healthcare, and avoid proper compensation. With
Animal's vision, the tragedy is a metaphor for continued injustice, whereby the
contaminated earth and distorted bodies bear witness to corporate indifference
and continued exploitation. This line
reflects how the memory of the disaster is embedded in the landscape and bodies
of the people, echoing the eco-critical argument that memory is not merely
historical but material and embodied (Gibson, 2013). The weeds, constantly
growing in contaminated soil, serve as living memory, resisting corporate
attempts to erase the disaster (Bennett, 2010).Animal’s body, disfigured by chemical poisoning, becomes a
metaphor for the interrelation of environmental violence and bodily suffering
(Kafer, 2013). The novel rejects ableist frameworks, in line with eco-crip
theory, which challenges the idea that disability is something to be “fixed”
(Taylor, 2017).
“My body is not a problem to be solved,
but a testimony to injustice” (Sinha, 2007, p. 145).The body-as-ecology
perspective argues that human suffering can never be disentangled from environmental
exploitation (Haraway, 2016). Animals' refusal of medical "cures" is
a gesture of refusal against industrial narratives working to sanitize or hide
environmental violence (Barad, 2007). In Animal's People, Animal's
refusal to submit to medical "cures" is a powerful act of resistance
to the industrial and medical establishment's effort to efface the visible
traces of ecological violence. The Kampani Corporation's chemical catastrophe
polluted not only the environment but also left permanent scars on the bodies
of the victimized community. Medical interventions are not shown as acts of
care, but as attempts to depoliticize and sanitize the effects of industrial
exploitation. Animal's deformity is a living witness to corporate
irresponsibility, and his unwillingness to "normalize" his body is an
act of political defiance. He maintains that his twisted body testifies to the
truth that the corporation and state would like to hide. The corporate-medical
complex, in harmony with business interests, wants to cover up the disaster as
a closed chapter and supply cosmetic cures that will make the suffering
invisible. But Animal's refusal of such procedures is a conscious attempt to
defy this erasure of narrative. His body becomes a protest site, a living
monument to the injustice done to his people. This is in line with eco-crip
theory that identifies the environmental body as a kind of central piece for
the intersection of social justice, disability, and ecology. Animal's refusal
therefore criticizes the structural attempt to veil environmental violence as
medical benevolence.
The Bhopal-model disaster in the novel
illustrates Nixon's (2011) theory of slow violence, showing how industrial
disaster impinges disproportionately on vulnerable communities over time. The
Kampani Corporation's attempt to escape responsibility demonstrates the
convergence of environmental and social injustice (Bullard, 1993).“They poison the land and deny accountability” (Sinha, 2007, p.
156).Environmental justice criticism highlights how poor, indigenous, and
disabled bodies are sites of systemic exploitation (Schlosberg, 2007). The
corporate-state nexus demonstrates how power structures maintain environmental
inequities (Pulido, 2016).Animal’s community resists erasure not through grand
political acts, but by surviving, telling their stories, and maintaining
relational ties with the land. The weeds grow without permission, symbolizing
ecological defiance (Morton, 2010).“The weeds do not ask for permission to
grow” (Sinha, 2007, p. 196).This reflects Haraway’s (2016) posthumanist ethics
of interdependence, rejecting the hierarchical separation of humans and
nonhumans. The collective memory and embodied experiences of the people are
central to resisting dominant industrial narratives (Clark, 2011).
Environmental justice emerges as a core theme, linking environmental
harm to class, race, and disability. Bullard (1993) argues that environmental
racism and class oppression are inseparable from environmental injustice. In Animal’s
People, the dispossession of land, denial of healthcare, and erasure of
voice demonstrate the systemic nature of environmental violence (Alaimo,
2016).The novel calls for a decolonized understanding of nature, where
Indigenous epistemologies and local knowledge systems challenge capitalist
exploitation (Guha, 2000).Animal’s
People stands as a powerful ecocritical narrative, weaving together memory,
trauma, and disaster to critique systemic ecological violence. Through the
embodied experiences of Animal and the resilient growth of weeds, the novel
argues for an eco-crip, posthuman perspective that centers interdependence,
environmental justice, and resistance. Indra Sinha’s work remains a profound
literary testament to the ongoing struggle for ecological and social justice.
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