Sacred Ecology, Eco-anxiety,
and Survival Environmentalism of the Poor: A Critical Study of Siddhartha
Sarma’s Year of the Weeds
Suniti Maiti,
JRF, Vidyasagar University,
West Bengal, India.
Abstract: The environmental history of India has witnessed a
plethora of environmental movements ranging from the Chipko Movement (1973), Narmada
Bachao Andolan (1985),to
the recently forged Save Aravalli Movement of December, 2025, which were raised
against various environmental issues pertaining to industrialization, mega dam
construction, mining, and other similar developmental enterprises. As a matter
of fact, in almost every case, it’s the very marginalized or “ecosystem
people”(a term coined by Guha and Martinez-Alier), mostly the indigenous
tribals, whose resource-rich sacred ecosystems, as a result of unbridled and
thoughtless resource exploitation by the government and other powerful
agencies, undergo massive detrimental changes, which create into the hearts of
these impoverished people a sense of profound eco-anxiety(a term introduced by
Glenn Albrecht), which is conceived as a “chronic fear of environmental doom”
(Clayton et al. 29). In order to safeguard their immediate environment, they
collectively raise voice against the prevalent ecological injustices. However,
in this paper, I shall majorly employ the theoretical framework of
“eco-anxiety” by Glenn Albrecht and Michel Bourban, and “environmentalism of
the poor” by J. Martinez-Alier and Ramachandra Guha to closely examine the
eco-centric lives of the poor Gond people of Deogan located in the district of
Balangir in Odisha, their overwhelming anxiety owing to a government-sponsored
mining project surrounding the Devi Hills, and their integrated resistance , as
depicted in Siddhartha Sarma’s young adult eco-fiction Year of the Weeds (2018).
Keywords: Sacred ecology, eco-anxiety, environmentalism of the poor,
mining-induced displacement
Introduction
‘“The Aravalli
range should not be defined by height alone, but by its ecological, geological
and climatic role,” Vikrant Tongad, an environmental activist associated with
the movement to save the Aravallis, told BBC.”’ This very report, dated
December 22, 2025, instantly brings to our mind the vibrant visuals of the
spontaneous peaceful protests raised by farmers, environmental activists,
residents, lawyers and political parties in the states like Rajasthan, Haryana,
Gujrat, and Delhi, as a reaction against the Supreme Court’s approval of the
new definition of the Aravalli, i.e., “an Aravalli hill is any landform rising
at least 100 metres (328 ft) above the surrounding terrain. Two or more such
hills within 500 metres of each other, along with the land between them, are
considered an Aravalli range.” This new definition of Aravalli, thus, directly excludes the
numerous small hills and their ecosystems developed around the major Aravalli
hills, paving the ways for unrestricted mining and construction in future, and
its resultant severe ecological damage. This is a pretty commonplace scenario
in the history of Indian environmental movements, often called Indian
environmentalism. However, the roots of the ‘Indian environmental movement’ can
be traced back to the Chipko movement which began in April, 1973 in the Garhwal
Himalaya of Uttarakhand under the leadership of Sunderlal Bahuguna, in order to
oppose commercial logging and deforestation. Later, in 1978, the Silent Valley
Movement was initiated in Kerala to stand against a hydroelectric project which
was to be launched in a large evergreen forest area. Other significant
ecological movements include Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada River
Movement, led by Medha Patkar against unethical construction of mega dam) of
1985, Tehri Dam Conflict of 1980s (headed by Sunderlal Bahuguna against the dam
building on the river Bhagirathi in Uttarakhand), and the Appiko Movement of
1983 initiated by Pandurang Hegde in Karnataka to preserve the Western Ghats
forests. A state like Odisha which is largely inhabited by tribal people is
also not an exception to this case. In fact, if we go by the statistics, we
shall find that the state’s tribal population is around 25% of the total
population, and about 45% of the state’s entire geographical area is occupied
by these tribes (Behera and Padhi 103). There are around 62 tribal communities
among which 13 tribes belong to Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups
(PVTGs). The major tribes are Dongria
Kondh, Gond, Banjara, Bhuyan, Desua Bhumij, Holva, Kharwar, etc. The tribals of
Odisha are generally forest-dwelling people who possess their own cultural and
religious identity. They worship nature and heavily depend upon their
forest-rich ecosystem for their day-to-day livelihood. They derive forest
products like woods, herbal plants, fruits, honey, flowers, etc, and, in
return, provide protection to their benefactor forever. Thus, they co-exist in
close correspondence with each other. Over the years, it is these poor
“ecosystem people” who have always been deprived of their fundamental rights,
and are made the scapegoat of the governmental whims. They had no rights over
their land and forest since the colonial times, which, on one hand, made them
lose their farming-based livelihood, and, on the other, rendered them homeless.
Such fear of getting dislocated and losing their own familiar environment
creates in their mind a deep sense of anxiety which is commonly called
“eco-anxiety” or “climate-anxiety” (as termed by Glenn Albrecht). These sorts
of ecological emotions or “Earth emotions” are further divided by Michel
Bourban into two categories- “sadness-related ecological emotion” and “threat-related
ecological emotion”. Solastalgia, which is defined by Albrecht as “the
homesickness you have when you are still at home. […] Home is becoming more
than unrecognizable: it is for many becoming increasingly hostile” (Albrecht
200), is an example of the first category of ecological emotion. Eco-anxiety or
climate-anxiety, and eco-horror fall under the second category of ecological
emotion. Although, eco-anxiety and climate-anxiety are often clubbed together,
there lies an essential difference between them. While the latter mainly refers
to a form of eco-anxiety based on climate change and its following impacts, the
former also includes other environmental changes, for instance, bio-diversity
loss, ocean acidification, and fresh-water change (Bourban15). On that note,
climate-anxiety can be righteously called a form of eco-anxiety. Eco-anxiety
can be especially experienced in the case of anticipated loss of species
diversities or ecological diversities.
However, in
reaction against the exploitative injustices, the tribal people gathered
courage and formed a number of collective uprisings, such as, the Santhal
revolt of 1855, Ghumsar rising (1834-56), and Sambalpur revolt (1827 &
1864). In the post-independence Odisha also, there have been several environmental
movements like Nilagri
(1947),
Kharswan (1947), and
Mayurbhanj (1949), but the
most telling among these is the Niyamgiri Movement led by the Dongria Kondh
people against the Vedanta, a private mining company, which was about to
establish a bauxite-aluminum factory near Niyamgiri Hill. The movement
officially started after May 10, 2004 with the signing of an agreement between
Vedanta Alumina Limited and Orissa Mining Corporation Limited (OMC), and it
continued till 2014 (Behera and Ranjan Padhi, 109). In this very context, a
close analysis of Siddhartha Sarma’s widely read young adult novel Year of
the Weeds (2018) becomes pertinent. Mir Ahammad Ali’s book chapter titled
“Eco-anxiety, Trauma and Resilience of the Dongria Kond Tribe of India:
Locating the Literary and Cultural Responses of the Niyamgiri Movement in the
Global Scenario” is an engaging work on the Niyamgiri Movement and the Dongria
Kond Tribe. Goutam Karmakar in his article entitled “Injustice and Subaltern
Environmentalism: Tribal Ecosystem and Decolonial Practices in Bhoopal’s
Forest, Blood & Survival: Life and Times of Komuram Bheem” has focused on
the natural environment of the tribes and their environmentalism. Siddhartha
Sarma, born in Assam and later settled in Delhi, is a popular contemporary
author-cum-journalist. In fact, his first Young Adult (YA) fiction The
Grasshopper’s Run (2009) earned him the Crossword Book Award in 2010 and
the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2011 in the genre of Children’s Literature. His
extractivist teen novel Year of the Weeds, which won the Neev Book Award
2019, is primarily based on the Dongria Kondh’s Niyamgiri Movement of 2008 in
the state of Odisha. The novel offers a bold representation of the tribal lives
in Odisha through the vivid delineation of the Gonds, a major tribal community,
predominantly residing in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra,
Chhattisgarh, Bihar, and Odisha. It vividly portrays how, at the beginning, the
Gond people of the village called Deogan, and its neighbouring villages, located
in the Balangir district of Odisha, had been living peacefully by the grace of
the sacred Devil Hills, but an unprecedented move on the part of the Government
in the form of bauxite mining around the Devi Hills pushed them into severe
existential crisis. As an immediate end of the proposed bauxite-aluminium
project which was to be executed by a government-backed private mining company,
the villagers of the five Gond villages surrounding the Devi Hills were left in
the face of a large-scale displacement. They, having been boosted by the unique
ideas of the novel’s protagonist Korok, gave a befitting reply by collectively
appealing in the Supreme Court against the governmental order, and ultimately
conquered in preserving their fundamental rights to indigenous ecology.
Exploring the
Sacred Ecology of the Gonds in Year of the Weeds
Siddhartha
Sarma’s ecological narrative Year of the Weeds provides a detailed
description of the Gonds’ lives in Deogan located in the Balangir district of
Odisha, and their traditional rituals. The Gonds, in the novel, are depicted as
simple-minded and hard-working people who live in close proximity with the Devi
Hills and the forests surrounding it. In the words of Anchita’s mother, a
character of the novel, the Gond life is that of “a noble savage”, which is
less complex as compared to that of the city dwellers like her. As the name suggests, the Devi Hills are
looked upon by the Gonds as their prime goddess. They staunchly subscribe to
the views of incorporealism or formless divinity. Instead of worshipping any
temple gods, they make their offerings to the stones, hills, trees, and other
natural objects. Along with the Devi Hills, their chief deity, there are
hundreds of small gods called pens, and other minor gods like the holy saja
trees. In the second chapter of the novel, we’re introduced to these tribal deities,
when Korok, our young adult protagonist, accompanied by Anchita, the DFO’s
daughter, goes to the forests on the Devi Hills in search of new herbs:
On the way they
passed a short, thick piece of bamboo, split lengthwise and tied back together,
on the side of the trail, under a tree, where someone had left yellow flowers.
Korok said that was a pen, a small god, this one tied to the tree. There was a
thick piece of iron inside the bamboo, he said, and that was for the pen…There
were Korok said hundreds of pens on Devi Hills…But these were minor gods. Even
the holy saja trees were important, but it was the hill that was most
important. She was the goddess of the Gonds here (Sarma26).
Thus, the lives
of these Gond people revolve around the benevolent presence of the holy Devi
Hills which like a true mother always protects them.
The narrator,
further, introduces the ideas of hanal and Pogho Bhum which, as per the
traditional Gond belief, are related to one’s post-mortal state. As describes
Korok:
They are for the
hanal. The…when someone dies, their body goes underground and becomes hanal. It
is…like a ghost, but not a ghost. The stones are for the hanal of the person…If
I die, that part of me which likes growing flowers and herbs, that part goes up
to Pogho Bhum…But for those who are left behind, the stones are where the
person’s memories stay. This is why everyone comes here, to the hanal kot. To
talk to them (Sarma24-25).
The Gonds’ lives
are essentially marked by all such sets of local beliefs which earn them a
unique indigenous identity not only in India but also in the global sphere.
Eco-anxiety and
the Fear of Mining-induced Displacement
The motion of
Sarma’s eco-narrative gets accelerated with the advent of the government
officials carrying the news that a big private company, backed by the
government, will be mining in the areas pervading the Devi Hills. As one of the
surveyors puts it:
This hill and
surrounding areas have bauxite in it. You know, aluminium? The government is
going to lease it to a big Company. We are surveying it. See that machine? It’s
a survey machine(Sarma 27).
Most of the villagers of Deogan and
other Gond villages had no idea about the mechanism of bauxite-mining since
they were not familiar with this sort of activity. But, Korok, a boy of 14,
could very well anticipate the ensuing danger in the forms of forced
displacement and massive environmental damage and he discloses it to Anchita:
It means the Company will dig the bauxite from
the hill and where ever else it is. A lot of things will happen, big machines,
many, many people will come and stay here. They will clear these villages,
build roads (Sarma 27).
These words of
Korok speak volumes of the growing fear and ecological concerns leading to
eco-anxiety that kept disrupting his mind day and night.
We find Korok go
through this phase of extreme eco-anxiety again when Sarkari Patnaik, the out
and out corrupt Superintendent of Police of Balangir district, and his men,
arrest all the headmen of the Gond villages along with Jadob mastor by falsely
alleging that the villagers were in touch with the Maoists and they were
secretly planning to attack the police. Korok feels immensely helpless and
alienated, and keeps imagining how the unprecedented enemy would destroy not
only their place of living and its ecosystem but also his larger-than-life
garden, and the age-old cultural and religious history of the Gonds:
But this
morning, Korok felt really, really alone. Without the leaders, there was
nothing anybody could do. The government would make the villagers leave their
homes. The epho’s house and garden would stay. Or maybe not…Korok’s garden
would be swallowed by the mine. He could not even bear to imagine it…And what
would happen to his mother’s hanal, and all the others? (Sarma 124)
This unrelenting
anxiety, better say, eco-anxiety of Korok looms large as a “chronic fear of
environmental doom” (Clayton et al. 29). It also validates three basic features
of eco-anxiety as put forward by Glenn Albrecht-(1) the kind of threat
eco-anxious people must deal with is primarily environmental in nature, (2)
this state of anxiety always keeps recurring, and (3) it is a form of fear
(Bourban 37).
Survival
Environmentalism of the Poor in Year of the Weeds
As depicted inYear
of the Weeds, the villagers of the Gond villages like Deogan are mostly
daily labourers except the village headmen like mahji who cultivate their own
land. These impoverished “ecosystem people” greatly owe their daily living to
the sacred Devi Hills which provides them with everything they need for
survival such as fresh water and medicines. As the fiction reads, “They
believed this was why there were so many medicinal plants on her…The two streams
that flowed from the hill to Tel River were sacred water for the villages”
(Sarma 26).Despite being peace-loving people, these Gonds have often been
physically tormented and harassed by the people in power like Sorkari Patnaik
and Behera, the District Collector. Korok’s father was arrested by Patnaik with
the false allegation of timber smuggling. The narrator sarcastically describes
the incident:
When Korok’s
father was arrested, he had been on his bicycle, with a bundle of potatoes from
his field which he was carrying to Deogan’s weekly market. In a fit of
efficiency that Balangir police were never known for, they had put him in their
jeep and gone off…and come back to pick up the bicycle and the potatoes (Sarma
10).
Thus, they are
projected as a stigma to the society. Their mutual ecosystem, however, is
confronted with terrible existential crisis when the government of Odisha
launches a bauxite-mining project around the Devi Hills and its vicinity. A big
private company is given the licence by the government to take care of the
mining activities on completion of the geological survey. Standing on the verge
of a sheer ecological displacement, when they unite themselves and form a
blockade to not let the officials enter their villages, they are inhumanly beaten
up by Patnaik and his police:
So, Patnaik’s
men charged the Gonds, who did not expect it. They thought Patnaik would ask
questions, wait for some time, perhaps call the Collector…But he didn’t wait.
Lathi charge. So, the mahji, and Jadob, and the elders in the front line got
hit first…Korok, in the second row, got hit a few times in the back and ankles,
and a vicious jab at his left foot by a policeman’s boot opened a small cut,
making him hobble with pain (Sarma 63).
After a couple
of months, they decide to go with Korok’s unusual plan of voting against
mining, and appeal to the Supreme Court. Eventually, they win the battle
against the government and get back their rights over their lands and the Devi
Hills. The survival resistance made by the ecosystem people of Deogan may very
well be theorized as “environmentalism of the poor “which is defined by
Ramachandra Guha and J. Martinez-Alieras “the resistance offered by ecosystem
people to the process of resource capture by omnivores…, or struggles by peasants
against the diversion of forest and grazing land to industry” (Guha and
Martinez-Alier 12).
Conclusion
Siddhartha
Sarma’s riveting young adult eco-fiction showcases how the peaceful and
sustainable lives of the Gonds are utterly ruined by the government-led
unethical mining enterprise, and how they ultimately revive ecological
stability and establish tribal rights through a series of collective protests.
It also mirrors the truth that even in this 21st century these
indigenous tribal people are sidelined by the privileged class so that they
can’t come up to the mainstream. Consequently, their rich knowledge of
environment and worldview often goes unassessed.
Works Cited
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Ali, Mir Ahammad.“Eco-anxiety, Trauma and Resilience of the Dongria Kond Tribe of India: Locating the Literary and Cultural Responses of the Niyamgiri Movement in the Global Scenario”. Imagining Ecocatastrophe: Reading Literary and Cultural Texts in the Global Context, edited by Scott Slovic et al., Taylor & Francis, 2025, pp.125-139.
Behera, Minaketan, and Soubhagya Ranjan Padhi. “Tribal Movements against Mining-induced Displacement in Odisha: The Case of Dongria Kondh’s Niyamgiri Movement”. The Oriental Anthropologist, vol.22, no.1, 2022, p. 103 &109.
Bourban, Michel. Eco-Anxiety and Ecological Citizenship: Navigating an Ecological Emotion. Palgrave Macmillan, 2026.
Clayton, Susan, et al. Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance. American Psychological Association and ecoAmerica, 2017.
Guha, Ramachandra, and Juan Martinez-Alier. Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South. Earthscan, 1997.
Karmakar, Goutam. “Injustice and Subaltern Environmentalism: Tribal Ecosystem and Decolonial Practices in Bhoopal’s Forest, Blood & Survival: Life and Times of Komuram Bheem”. Journal of Cultural Research, vol.28, no.4, 2024, pp.333-352.
Sarma, Siddhartha. Year of the Weeds. Duckbill Books, 2018.