Ecological Atrocity in Indian Blue: Reimagining Blue
Humanities through an Indian Ecocritical Perspective
Manisha Goswami,
Department of English Literature,
Vidyasagar University,
Midnapore, West Bengal, India.
Abstract: Water
has always been an essential element in the structure of universal existence
that interweaves human lives, emotions, philosophy, culture, and countless
other dimensions of experience. The exploration of these dimensions has brought
the field of Blue Humanities into the light, offering a perspective, though
recently formalised, that draws upon concepts and connections that have existed
since time immemorial. This article employs the lens of blue humanities to
promote a relational understanding of the Indian rivers and ecological
degradation. Indian rivers are not merely scenic or functional landscapes, but
they are dynamic, living forces that have shaped cultural identity, social
structures, spiritual traditions, and ecological systems for thousands of
years. This article accentuates a dystopian narrative that anchors political
satire and ecological absurdism to critique India’s contemporary environmental
collapse and neoliberal complexities of water as a resource through an analysis
of Sarnath Banerjee’s “All Quiet in Vikaspuri”. The central motif of the novel
revolves around the plumber’s surreal quest to retrieve the mythical Saraswati
River. This quest questions the myth, consumerism, scarcity, and
hydro-political inequalities that act as a significant intervention in the
contemporary ecoliterary discourse.
Keywords - Blue Humanities, Ecocriticism, Graphic Novel,
Indian Rivers
Introduction
While our world is deeply
connected to nature, we cannot overlook the fact of degradation within
ecological sustainability. As the global economy continues to evolve, the
exacerbation of environmental issues has become increasingly concerning to the
world, affecting multidimensional aspects of the national economy, society, and
environment. Mindless consumerism and economic growth have become distinctive
characteristics of the present ecological degradation, which appears more
anthropogenic than natural. Ecoliteracy was initially overlooked as a
legislative issue for a long time; however, this changed with the creation of
the United Nations Development Group (UNEP) in 1972 under the direction of
Maurice Strong. It facilitated the development and implementation of several
multilateral environmental agreements, including the Minamata Convention on
Mercury, the Montreal Protocol, and a range of international environmental
initiatives. In the Indian milieu, ecological governance has made significant
progress through engagement with the Millennium Development Goals. It has since
been aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved by 2030
under NITI Aayog’s national implementation and monitoring.
In the current global
scenario, the practical implementation of technological interventions for
environmental protection has become a critical area of focus, with continuous
awareness and ecoliteracy being undertaken to foster a more sustainable world.
To establish its importance to a broader audience, many scholars and
researchers choose to adopt writing and pedagogical practices that disseminate
environmental awareness “To enhance people’s understanding of anthropocentric
approach towards the environment, the need for innovation in the education
system is needed” (Abinaya
191). The panoptic observation of this study points out the acute
degradation of the water system, accentuating it as a critical site of environmental
crisis. The article narrows its scope and advances towards the framework of
Blue Humanities in relation to Indian rivers, offering a critical view of rich
mythical, cultural and civilizational dimensions of these rivers being
threatened by modern evolution and environmental destruction. Indian
Literature, which was once limited to the specific genre of nobles, saints and
mythological elements, broke its barrier during the colonisation and
independence struggle. 19th-century writers were influenced by American and
British writers, resulting in the expansion and collaboration of society over
literature. The composition of the extraordinary works of Amitav Ghosh’s ‘The
Hungry Tide’ and ‘Gun Island’, Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Aranyer Adhikar’, and Kiran
Desai’s ‘The Inheritance of Loss’ foreground the dominant relationship of
humans over nature. This article significantly investigates ecological
deterioration in Sarnath Banerjee’s work, attributing it to the dominant
discourse of ecological crises surrounding Indian rivers as the novel's
quintessential narrative structure, grasping the complexities of river
degradation, water scarcity, and hydropolitical anxieties in modern Indian
narratives.
Congruence of Blue Humanities in ‘All Quiet in Vikaspuri’
English literature, which
was once rooted in land-based perspectives, began to shift its focus toward the
seas and oceans, and was largely influenced by the pioneering work of Steve
Mentz. In 2009, literary scholar Steve Mentz coined the phrase ‘Blue cultural
studies, ’ also known as Blue humanities, which proffers a broader platform for
scholars to explore the diverse dimensions of this emerging genre. Water was
once merely a figurative element, but now it plunges into the deeper layer of
literature, illuminating the social, cultural, and religious texture of past
works, while revealing the profound connections between aquatic imagery and the
human psyche, especially under the scholarly guidance of figures like Dan
Brayton, Hester Blum, and Steve Mentz. In the present day, blue humanities
functions as a vibrant and inclusive field of literary inquiry, fostering
global innovation and enabling representation of diverse ethnic and cultural
identities. “We must view the ocean not as a placeless expanse but as a space
produced through human histories, economies, and ecologies, which continuously
evolve through interactions between people, non-human organisms, and material
forces”(Peters and Steinberg
158).
India is deeply rooted in
water, a heritage closely tied to its society, culture, and religion, offering
an abundance of literary resources that date back to the earliest periods of
human civilisation. Thus, when we discuss ecocriticism in the context of Blue
Humanities, ‘All Quiet in Vikaspuri’ clearly resonates with the purpose. The
protagonist of the novel, Girish, a plumber struggling to break free from the
shackles of the collapsed industrial township of Tambapur, travels in search of
a livelihood and meaning in Delhi, “the doomed procession of displaced
thousands” (Banerjee 16).
His absurd confrontation with Rastogi, a bureaucratic figure obsessed with
locating the mythical Indian river Saraswati, becomes his inducement “Girish,
in the story, finds himself tweaking in underground labour, drilling for water
for the Pataal Jal project” (Ajay and Prakash 338). Through this unlikely alliance, Banerjee
presents a paradoxical and unsettling portrayal of Delhi’s brewing water
crisis, connoting the city’s parched landscape and dysfunctional water
infrastructure. Girish’s ensuing journey to trace the lost Saraswati in this
context is not just a physical survival quest but also a symbolic exploration.
While he adventures toward the solution of metamorphosed desperation, he
encounters a series of individuals who are subsumed by the pursuit of a
vanishing water source. Among them is Jagat Singh, an illegal water supplier
who diverts public water to private tankers, leaving them in a precarious
survival situation. Rajen, another crippling character, highlights the hegemony
of elites who commodify water by selling it to the elite of Delhi. The systemic
denunciation of the late Colonel Gambhir and Awasthy culminates in the
vulnerability of the crisis, particularly in his personal act of exploiting
public resources for private gain, exacerbating the state’s inefficiencies.
Baneerjee’s careful construction of Philippa Carry-Jones’s extravagant and
unsustainable water consumption openly portrays her as oblivious to the growing
crisis “Ms Carrey Jones was weary of dirt and germs of India and tried to
protect herself at all cost.” (Banerjee 38), “Every time the child peed in the
pool, she had it drained and refilled with fresh water” (Ibid, 38), thereby
satirically exposing the realities of Delhi’s water crisis, revealing the
cascading confluence of degraded ecology and socio-political hypocrisy.
The fractured visual and
textual elements collectively justify the text’s engagement with the central
concerns of Blue Humanities, where each character’s trajectory is intricately
shaped by water scarcity and the obsessive quest for a mythological river
broadens the violation of water deprivation, hydropolitics, and corrupt
bureaucratic conduct.
Anatomy of Ecocricism via graphic narratives
The fusion of
sustainability and graphic novels as a substantial part of popular culture is
particularly relevant to the postmodern reader who is more fascinated by the
growing digital aspects. The exaggerated visual and textual graphics expose the
paradoxical relationship to the deterioration of nature, concurrently trendy
within the popular cultural industry. The subject matter of this genre can
address various social, political, or cultural issues, specifically tailored
for the adult audience, and confronts traumatic visuals, parodies of classical
texts, historical events, or even films. The diverse readers of India gained
momentum with the multilingual advancement of narrative structures, which has
permanently dominated the adversity of this genre within the culture industry.
Indian diversity is at the core of social issues, thus providing a fertile
ground for graphic novels, where the satire and parody are not adaptations of
literary texts but rather intentional and relevant to contemporary society. Indian
Graphic novelists often consider Orijit Sen’s ‘River of the Stories’ as India's
first successful graphic novel, which predominantly questions the social and
political issues concerning the controversial construction of the Naramada dam,
reflecting the environmental crisis at deposition. Apart from that, The Harappa
Files, The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers, and Delhi Calm are a few examples that
can be considered as a medium of expansion of this literary genre.
‘All Quiest in Vikaspuri’
certainly virtualises the predominant topic of ecological disputes within the
dystopian city of Delhi, Bannerjee’s extraordinary characterisation of
narratives culminates in satire and paradox of urban city with purging
circulation of water conflicts surrounding the different categorical strata of
individuals. The ambitious Smart City Mission of Delhi is highly satirical in
its portrayal of the transcendental shift from industrial growth of Tambhapur
to mortified worker protests and ultimately privatisation “When industries take
over agricultural land and dams drown entire villages and destroy settled
communities to produce unjustifiable low amounts of electricity” (Banerjee 56)
which forces our protagonist to approach Delhi as a path to rejuvenation.
Banerjee’s pick for Delhi is crucial as it dissipates the utmost urgency of
ethical governance foreshadowed by bureaucratic hydro-politics in the crisis of
water, the utmost necessity of living beings. The various individuals and their
approaches to addressing the urban crisis concern us with holistic ecological
degradation and how all these individuals are using this degradation not as a
crisis but as an opportunity for their own gain. Water here acts as a bracing
factor both mythologically and realistically. On one hand, they refuse to
acknowledge the growing concerns of the marginalised population, and
ironically, on the other hand, the quest for the river Saraswati, which,
according to Indian mythology, had vanished, is finally answered at the end of
the novel. The reader's perpetual attempt to understand the facts and
narrativization surrounding the physical reality is ironic in light of the
author’s intentional use of the river Saraswati, which in the contemporary
world remains unknown, as the source explains an ironic twist and the modern
sick mindset and urge for realistic resolution.
Thus, the work’s
illustration of a decaying city not only generalises the concept of
environmental privatisation, hydrological commodification, and lack of
governance, but also highlights the marginalised community as the sole victim
of this crisis, perfectly stimulating the discussion of this article.
Conclusion
“The ocean is central to
understanding capitalism’s ecological crisis, as it has been a site of
exploitation, transportation, and resource extraction, often viewed as
limitless but now increasingly recognised as finite and fragile” (Gerhardt et. al 6) has been
explicitly pictured in Sarnath Banerjee’s ‘All Quiet in Vikaspuri’. This
article brings one of the dominant genres of Indian literature into the light
of Blue Humanities, interconnecting with possible narratives. A consistent
exploitation of nature, a processed violence of unmindful consumption under the
supervision of the State Apparatus, consuming us bit by bit. The necessity of ecoliteracy
is more evident now than ever. The current ecological atrocity did not stop
till water extended to every province of environmental pollution. While
Banerjee is describing dystopian Delhi in the post-19th century, it ironically
matches the current scenario of Delhi. The novel's extraordinary ornamentation
of narratives and their diverse situations remains coherent despite despair;
individuals' hidden moral bankruptcy unveils the moral insensitivity and
necessity for ecoliteracy. The use of hydro-politics enlightens readers to
another side of the novel, dissecting the characters, their actions and most
importantly, the use of speech and dialogue. Banerjee explored the part of
water scarcity and pollution under the then political circumstances, which perfectly
fits the research behind the paper, comprising diversity within the graphic
novels.
This paper dives into the characters and interprets the novel through
the lens of water literature, which is substantial to the emerging scholarly
impression. India, being diverse in its own geographical structure and
culturally established, allows the growth of new works and sustained academic
research in Blue Humanities.
Works Cited
Vinayakaselvi, M. Angkayarkan, and R. Abinaya. “Ecoliteracy In Sarnath Banerjee’s Corridor And All Quiet In Vikaspuri”, Migration Letters, vol. 19, no. S2, 2022, pp. 190-195. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5254537
Peters K and Steinberg P. “Volume and Vision: Fluid Frames of Thinking Ocean Space.” Harvard Design Magazine, no. 35, 2014, pp.124-129
Gerhardt, Christina, and Jason W. Moore, editors. Sea Changes: Historicizing the Ocean. Routledge, 2019.
Banerjee, Sarnath. All Quiet in Vikaspuri. Harper Collins India, 2015.
Buschmann, Rainer. “Maritime History as World History, and: Sea Changes: Historicizing the Ocean (review)”, Journal of World History, vol. 16, no. 1, Mar 2005, pp. 102-106 10.1353/jwh.2005.0135
M., Ajay and Maneesha
Prakash. “Hydropolitics in panels: Satirizing urban crises in Sarnath
Banerjee’s All Quiet at Vikaspuri”, Agathos:
An International Review of the Humanities and Social Sciences, vol. 16, no.
2 (31), 2025, pp. 331-342. https://www.agathos-international-review.com/issues/2025/31/Ajay%20&%20Prakash.pdf
Sawhney, Arpita. “The Indian Ocean as an Archive: A
Blue Humanities Perspective on Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies,” International Journal of English Literature
and Social Sciences, vol. 10, no. 3, May-June 2025, pp. 803-809. 10.22161/ijels.103.113