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ISSN: 3006-7251(Online)
MBSTU Journal of Science and Technology
Journal Homepage: https://journal.mbstu.ac.bd/index.php/jst
DOI: https://doi.org/10.69728/jst.v10.44
Analysing Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island as a Climate Fiction: Transgressing ‘Borders’ and
‘Orders’ by the Humans and Nonhumans
ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT
Article History
Submission: 07 June, 2024
Revision: 17 August, 2024
Accepted: 10 September, 2024
Published: 30 October, 2024
Amitav Ghosh has a tendency to write literary pieces focusing on climate issues. This aspiration
is also manifested in his novel Gun Island (2019). The author allegorizes the myth of Manasa
Devi, which creates a wonderful connection between humans and natural environment in this
novel. Gun Island (2019) explores the conviction of diversied environmental issues, such as
environmental injustice, migrant ecologies, and climate refugees. Although natural disasters
occur more or less everywhere in the world, the poor pay the highest price. The harsh reality
is that the most affected are the most marginalized regions of underprivileged countries.
Developed countries can still cope with its effects, but people in poor countries are persistently
being displaced. The Sundarbans is one such magnicent instance in Gun Island. Overall,
Ghosh has shown that migration of humans and nonhumans occurs simultaneously as a result
of climate change. Humans and nonhumans transgress the precincts of ‘border’ as well as
‘order’ to migrate from one place to another eco-friendly place. His perplexing story of Gun
Island is inexplicably mythical but contextually practical because it resonates with a group of
Asian and African people’s own experiences, emotions and their yearning for migration to
Europe due to climate change. This borderless migration cannot be stopped by any means of
order.
Keywords
Climate Change, Human
and Nonhuman Migration,
The Marginalization of
Environment, Environmental
Apocalypse, Environmental
Injustice
1. Introduction
Climate disaster is a buzzword in the modern world.
Human existence is under the threat of extinction due
to climate change. Climate ction (often glossed as cli-
) is chiey concerned with the cataclysmic environment.
The production of climate ction has exploded over the
last decade. It is thought to have a benecial ‘ecopolitical’
impact on the readers by convincing them of the
seriousness and urgency of climate change. According to
Schneider-Mayerson (2018), “cli-” reminds readers of
the cruelty of climate change. It helps readers envision
environmental futures and the effect of climate change on
human and nonhuman life (p. 473). The 21st century has
produced tons of different waste materials that damage
the ecosystem and have affected humanity in the last few
years (Šarčević-Todosijević et al., 2023). Climate ctions
address the effects of climate change on the ecosystem.
That is why climate ction is the focal point of discussion
among the critics of the 21st century. Murugavel (2020)
postulates that authors began to write about how
anthropogenic activities changed the natural ecosystem
in the early part of the 20th century. He further explains
how challenges related to climate change are portrayed in
climate ction. An intriguing aspect of climate ction is
that it helps the authority to materialize climate policy (p.4-
5). Kingsolver (2012), in her climate ction Flight Behaviour,
explicates how Monarch butteries (Danaus plexippus)
surprisingly alter their migratory path due to climate
change, and the story expounds how this instance of
these “displaced butteries helps an archetypal frustrated
housewife, Dellarobia Turnbow, metamorphosis into an
environmentally conscious individual” (Murugavel, 2020).
Likewise, Gun Island’s human and nonhuman characters
face an existential threat due to climate catastrophe. They
are forced to migrate across their b/orders to save their
lives, which is the main subject of this novel. The exodus
of the climate refugees questions the sociopolitical and
substantial constructions of geographical boundaries as
the novel attempts to threaten borders as well as orders.
Khan (2024) addresses Gun Island from the perspective
of “Planetary Environmentalism”. He contends that Gun
Island signals “the possibility of, and the imperative for,
multi-species as well as multi-ethnic and cross-cultural
cooperation as a way of facing climate change” and
“planetary environmentalism” transgresses “geographical
boundary created by humans” as borders are useless
while the planet is in danger (Khan, 2024). Moreover,
“Planetary environmentalism” seeks environmental
justice both for humans and nonhumans all over the
world (Khan, 2024). Edwin Gilson also detects that
Gun Island upholds “planetary consciousness” (274) as
it does not “discriminate between geographical borders,
*Corresponding author: iftakhar@mbstu.ac.bd
MBSTU Journal of Science and Technology, 10(2): 1-7, December 2024
Iftakhar Ahmed1*
1 Department of English, Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University, Tangail-1902, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Ahmed
2
nation-states, and living beings” (Samkaria, 2022). In
another ecoction, The Great Derangement: Climate Change
and the Unthinkable, Ghosh (2016) portrays the limitation
of humans to perceive ecological catastrophe. Ghosh
claims that the world is living through a time he refers to
as the ‘Great Derangement’, and future generations will
be shocked to see our indifference to the environment
(Fibisan, 2019). The climate issue of Gun Island can
be linked to American writer Octavia E. Butler’s cli-
Parable of the Sower (Butler, 1993), set in a post-apocalyptic
Earth as it portrays the aftermath of climate change
highlighting ‘corporate greed’ and ‘wealth inequality’.
The sufferings of the climate refugee in Gun Island can
be aligned with what Joan Martínez-Alier entitles the
‘Environmentalism of the Poor’. Martinez-Alier (2014)
puts forward in his article “The Environmentalism of
the Poor” that the consequences of ‘corporate control’
over land cause displacements (p. 239). Environmental
advocates in many countries practice the notion of the
‘‘environmentalism of the poor’’ to ght for climate
refugees.
The novel Gun Island (2019) discovers the “intersection of
the nonhuman with 21st century issues pertaining to racial
and ecological injustice, ethnic cleansing, environmental
catastrophe and migrant ecologies by way of allegorizing
the myth of Manasa Devi” (Samkaria, 2022). Manasa Devi
is a goddess of snakes and other venomous creatures.
Moreover, Samkaria (2022) has analyzed the text from
the perspective of the postcolonial ecocritical lens to
perceive how the contextualisation of the postcolonial
nonhuman destabilises the constructedness of borders.
Likewise, The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis
(2021) by Amitav Ghosh marks the massive exodus of
climate refugees due to the impacts of climate-related
adversities. In The Nutmeg’s Curse, Ghosh claims that the
credence of contemporary climate change is ingrained
in an antique geopolitical order fabricated by Western
colonialism. He discloses that our planetary crisis is the
outcome of our anthropocentric attitude. Francis (2021)
postulates that Gun Island uses the myth of the Gun
Merchant as a nexus to draw parallels between the Little
Ice Age and our contemporary scenario, where droughts,
oods, cyclones, wildres and pandemics have become a
part of our everyday lives. Moreover, this novel depicts
people and entire communities being displaced from
their native land and the radical changes in the migratory
patterns of various sea creatures due to changing climates
and warming waters (p.22).
In Gun Island (2019), the author delves into the
contemporary globalized world of man-made climate
metamorphoses that lead to agonizing illegal migrations
from the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans. As per
Bose and Satapathy (2021), it is also the story of several
more undocumented migrants from developing nations
who come to the West illegally in quest of a better
life, only to be tragically caught up in a web of human
trafcking, xenophobia, and incarceration. The study
conducted by Bose and Satapathy (2021) emphasizes the
socio-economic, political, and climatological reasons for,
as well as the effects of, the risky migration of climate
refugees. Moslund (2024) examines Amitav Ghosh’s
novel Gun Island to explore the queries posed by the
Anthropocene in order to form a new climate change
realism capable of representing larger than human
realities. It is the accomplishment of a cultural struggle
against climate change. Kanjirathingal and Banerjee
(2021) opine that with the advent of ecocriticism, the
contact of the physical environment with humans
and nonhumans became a crucial point in literature.
Amitav Ghosh explores the effects of human being’s
extravagant use of natural elements for his/her self-
centered intentions by using myth and history in his
ction. Kanjirathingal and Banerjee (2021) examine how
the selsh and anthropocentric approaches of human
beings cause extreme environmental mayhem and the
disorientation of human beings and other living and
nonliving things (p.54). The exodus of Gun Island can be
linked to the notion of an ‘Environmental Apocalypse’
proposed by Greg Garrard. Garrard (2023) points
out that the Europeans dominated the global in the
nineteenth century, which in turn caused mass emigration
from poor countries. Likewise, it is also observed in Gun
Island that this apocalyptic migration ultimately creates
environmental chaos and anarchy. This study attempts
to discuss how climate change forces humans and
nonhumans to migrate from one place to another.
The researcher has adopted a close textual analysis
approach to conduct this study. Textual analysis is used to
comprehend the meaning of a text and to perceive how
the text impacts, reects or rejects a society’s traditional,
moral and political opinions. Moreover, textual analysis
is applied to literary texts to examine messages portrayed
within the text. Data are scrutinized to understand the
inner meaning found within the text deeply. Allen (2017)
postulates that items that “inuence the interpretation
while conducting a textual analysis include (a) the analyst’s
worldview, (b) cultural, historical, political, and social
understanding of the environment within which the
text was made, and (c) attempting to understand what
the author or creator of the text intended at the time
the text was written/created” (p. 1754). The researcher
has considered the cultural, historical, political, and
social background of Gun Island to critically analyze
the language, symbols and imagery of the text. It is a
qualitative study. Primary data have been collected from
the novel Gun Island (2019) for thematic analysis. This
study also collected required secondary data from several
authentic sources, such as national and international
journals, periodicals, newspapers, magazines, websites,
books, etc.
2. Climate Change and Its Effects: The Nonhumans
Migration, the Dead Zones, and the Crop Failure
The novel Gun Island emphasizes how sea creatures face
displacement due to environmental mayhem. One of
the crucial characters is Piya, an Indian-American of
Analysing Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island......the Humans and Nonhumans
3
Bengali descent who works in the Sundarbans, tracking
the Irrawaddy dolphins. She knows the Sundarbans well
and visits the terrain frequently (Bose & Aamrita, 2021).
Piya is extremely worried about the loss of marine life
due to pollution and global warming. That is why she
has been studying Irrawaddy dolphin named Rani and
her calves as part of her research. Piya’s relationship
with the Irrawaddy dolphins is a shining example of
environmental sagacity and legacy. Piya, the researcher
and Rani (a dolphin) develop a spiritual connection with
time. It is obvious that Piya’s relationship with Rani is
“strong enough, and durable enough, to qualify as what
humans might regard as an old friendship” (Ghosh,
2019). Rani goes missing one day and Piya rescues the
trapped Rani when she sees her stuck in the nylon net.
Piya immediately sets Rani free, and after that, the dolphin
makes “eye contact with her, in a manner quite different
from other members of the pod” - a manner suggesting
“something more than mere recognition” (Ghosh, 2019).
Animal studies, akin to green/environmental studies,
attempts to understand human-animal relations (Mishra,
2016) and tends to “focus on the violence humans
perpetrate on species” taxonomically highly related to
them (Buell et al., 2011). Similarly, Piya’s relationship with
Rani is strongly bound up with notions of human-animal
inalienable connections. The illusion that Piya sees in the
dolphin’s eyes evokes the primordial beauty of human-
nonhuman relations.
Piya uses a GPS tracker to get real-time information on
Rani’s movements. Piya observes that as the sea level
rises and freshwater inows decrease, saltwater begins to
intrude deeper upstream, making the dolphin belt more
saline. As a result, dolphins and other animals migrate
from one place to another. To avoid the salt water, the
dolphins had to “venture further and further upriver, into
populated, heavily shed areas. Inevitably some had been
ensnared by shermen’s nets and some had been hit by
motorboats and steamers. …Over the last few years the
pod had lost so many members that its numbers were
now down to Rani and just two others” (Ghosh, 2019).
But the obligatory journey of the animals from one
place to another is not a happy one. Piya feels that the
shifting of habitats incurs ‘a huge source of stress for
them’ (p.103). Many animals die along the way. In Gun
Island, Rani and her calves die due to “cetacean stranding”
or “beaching” while migrating. While in Oregon, Piya
receives a mail from a stranger. The message of the mail
makes her heart bleed as “the message was written in the
style of a news report, and it described a mass beaching
of dozens of Irrawaddy dolphins at Garjontola Island in
the Sundarbans” (p.82). Although no apparent reason can
be found, Piya believes that “man-made sounds – from
submarines and solar equipment and stuff like that –
could be behind the beachings…. marine mammals use
echo location to navigate so if something messed with
that they could become disoriented and run themselves
aground” (Ghosh, 2019).
Allusions to environmental awareness are contextualized
throughout the story of the novel. Measuring the GPS
signals, Piya nds that not only rare species of dolphins,
but most marine and coastal animals are direct victims
of global warming and industrial waste management.
Undoubtedly, global warming is also the result of human
actions. Chemical fertilizers are being washed into the
ocean and its chain reaction is reducing the oxygen in
the water. As a result, the existence of sea creatures is
disappearing. Piya tells Deen about the contamination of
the waters in the Sundarbans and other parts of the world
by chemical efuents, which renders many aquatic areas
inhospitable for most living things and creates “oceanic
dead zones.” Although some special animals survive in
low oxygen, many areas of the ocean are becoming “dead
zones”. Piya is really worried about the oceanic “dead
zones” and tells the audience how she beholds:
‘Have you heard of oceanic dead zones? No? Well, they’re
these vast stretches of water that have a very low oxygen
content – too low for sh to survive. Those zones have
been growing at a phenomenal pace, mostl-/y because of
residues from chemical fertilizers. When they’re washed
into the sea they set off a chain reaction that leads to
all the oxygen being sucked out of the water. Only a
few highly specialized organisms can survive in those
conditions – everything else dies, which is why those
patches of water are known as “dead zones”. And those
zones have now spread over tens of thousands of square
miles of ocean – some of them are as large as middle
sized countries’ (Ghosh, 2019).
Similarly, as per the narrative of Gun Island, the dead
zones start “appearing in rivers too, especially where they
meet the sea, as in the estuaries of the Mississippi and
Pearl Rivers” (p.102). The novelist portrays this reality
with great compassion. A quote from Moyna, who lost
her husband in a severe cyclone, illustrates how a region
is becoming uninhabitable. Moyna states, “Both land
and water is going against the people of Sundarbans”
(p.56). The emergence of the “dead zones” is relevant to
the “stories about end of the world”, which is strongly
bound up with notions of ‘apocalypse’ proposed by Greg
Garrard. Furthermore, Murphy (2012) notes, “the world
is going to be destroyed by the wrath of nature” (n.p.).
Apart from the Sundarbans, the island of Venice, which
is about eight and a half thousand kilometers away from
India, has also been directly affected by global warming.
In Gun Island, Deen’s friend, the historian Cinta, is a
native of Venice. The ground oor of his house is also
ooded with tidal water. Too often, the centuries-old
city of Venice, standing on the soft mud of the lagoon,
goes underwater. Poorly educated Ra has migrated
from Sundarbans to Venice. He nds the Sundarbans
mysteriously similar to the Fondamente Nove barrage on
the northern edge of the city. Ra says,
‘I know that place well. On ood days we sometimes spend
the night there. I’ve been on those jetties. I’ve heard them.’
‘Heard what?’ ‘The worms. It’s just like the Sundarbans.
There, if you put your ear to the embankments you
can hear the crabs burrowing inside. My grandfather
Ahmed
4
showed me how to listen to them. Sometimes, if you
listen carefully, you can tell if an embankment is going to
collapse. It’s the same over here’ (Ghosh, 2019).
The noise Ra hears in Fondamente Nove is actually
caused by a type of insect called shipworm, which
is slowly changing its habitat due to climate change.
Likewise, lmmaker Gisa’s dog, Leola, dies of the
venomous yellow-bellied snake bite on the Venice
beach though the snakes are not supposed to be there.
However, the distribution of the snakes “was changing
with the warming of the oceans and they were migrating
northwards” (p.141).
Piya briefs the journalists on the long-term impacts of the
renery, such as ‘shoals of dead sh, the decline of crab
populations, and so on’ (p.184). Moreover, reneries are
polluting the Sundarbans. As a result, many sh are dying.
All over the world we see that river water is being polluted
by toxic chemicals. The narrator’s words are relevant here:
“The culprit here is a renery…….. we can’t just let them
get away with poisoning the Sundarbans…..they’ve been
dumping efuents into the rivers…What’s a sh kill?’ ‘It’s
when you nd thousands of dead sh oating on the
surface or washed up ashore...We’ve been seeing things
we’d never seen in these waters before –massive sh kills,
for example…..It’s happening all round the world with
more and more chemicals owing into rivers. But here
I’m pretty sure that it’s the renery that’s responsible”
(p.102-103).
In Gun Island, entomologist Lisa observes that bark
beetles eat up trees from the inside. It is alarming that
the bark beetles have been expanding their territory as
the mountains warm up rapidly. Moreover, the insects
have taken over almost the woodlands surrounding her
village. Lisa asks the mayor to take steps to demolish
the growth of the bark beetles. Furthermore, severe
heat and drought due to climate change cause wildres
in the village. Nevertheless, nobody gives it any thought
promptly. Rather, a story goes around that Lisa red the
woodlands herself to get more funding for her research.
The repercussions were devastating:
“this year there was a long drought and a couple of weeks
ago a huge wildre broke out, just as Lisa had warned. The
state had to declare an emergency and send in helicopters
and stuff. Two people died and dozens of houses were
burnt down” (p.116).
It is obvious that the setting of the novel Gun Island
is controlled by climate. The effects of greenhouse
gas emissions are being widely observed around the
world. Global warming is causing the sea level to rise.
The Sundarbans on the coast of the Bay of Bengal is
not immune to this disaster. Day by day, the sea is
consuming the Sundarbans. The ora and fauna of
the Sundarbans are the victims of global warming. An
elderly trust manager named Nilima Bose noties Deen,
the protagonist of the novel, that the “islands of the
Sundarbans are constantly being swallowed up by the
sea” (p.19). Ghosh also expresses his concern about
climate issues in his nonction The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables
for a Planet in Crisis that:
“Bangladesh, and the Bengal Delta more generally, is
exceptionally vulnerable to climate change……….Much
of the country lies less than one meter above sea level,
and it has already lost a good deal of land to the rising
waters” (p.155).
The plot of Gun Island tells us that climate change is
causing more and more natural disasters, resulting in
“long-term” dire consequences for the inhabitants of
the Sundarbans (p.55). Forests act as protectors during
natural calamities. A prime example of this is found in
Gun Island. For example, a category 4 cyclone had torn
through West Bengal and East Pakistan on November
12, 1970, and it is the Sundarbans that “absorbed the
impact of the cyclone” (p.20). The novel depicts the
picture of the long-term crop failure on the coasts of the
Sundarbans due to Cyclone Aila in 2009. As a result, the
existence of people dependent on the forests and sheries
is threatened. Moyna shares with Deen his concern that
the soil and water of the Sundarbans are becoming
uninhabitable. The water has become contaminated with
arsenic. As the height of tidal water increases, the dam
cannot be constructed. As a result, salt water is making
life more and more miserable. Fishermen cast their nets
and cannot catch sh like before (p.56) as the number of
“dead zones” is increasing day by day in the sea. Wildre
also causes natural disasters in Los Angeles as Deen
observes that “massive wildres had been raging around
Los Angeles for several days. Thousands of acres of land
had been incinerated and tens of thousands of people
had been moved to safety” (p.126). The Los Angeles
wildres highlight the gap between rich and poor. Deen
gets an aerial view from the plane and describes the re
from a safe distance. But the underdogs get burned in the
re. Deen’s depiction of wildres is a case in point:
“It was my good luck (or so I thought at the time) to be
seated on the left side of the plane. Leaning forward, I
scanned the horizon with my nose against the window. It
wasn’t long before dark smudges appeared in the distance.
They quickly grew into dense masses of smoke….. Even
more striking was the landscape that lay beneath our
ightpath – a charred, smouldering stretch of forested
hillside that had already been laid waste by the res”
(p.123).
3. Migration of the Humans: The Representation of
Climate Refugees
Garrard (2023) explains in the trope of ‘Environmental
Apocalypse’ that ecological catastrophe is inevitable due
to climate change. He further opines that “rapid growth
in the number of Europeans in the nineteenth century
provided troops, colonists and industrial workers that
made temporary global dominance possible, which in
turn allowed for mass emigration from overcrowded
nations” (p.105). Likewise, to emphasize the “planetary
scale of the climate crisis” (Khan, 2024), the narrative of
Gun Island moves from Kolkata to the Sundarbans, the
Sundarbans to Brooklyn, Brooklyn to Los Angeles, Los
Analysing Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island......the Humans and Nonhumans
5
Angeles to Brooklyn again, Brooklyn to Venice, and nally
to the Mediterranean Sea, near Sicily. Deen, the narrator
of the novel, serves as a crucial conduit for connecting all
the climatic spectacles. Deen’s travel companion, Moyna,
brings out the story of the indescribable hardships of the
people of the Sundarbans through which we learn about
“climate refugees”. People lean towards industry in the
neoliberal capitalist system. People make more and more
industries in the name of development. Sunita Narain
wrote about the ‘environmentalism of the poor’ in
Business Standard that “They know they are poor…….
what we call development will only make them poorer.
This is what I have called the environmentalism of the
poor” (Martinez-Alier, 2014). The poor are on the side
of the conservation of the environment against business
organizations. Moreover, in The Great Derangement (2016),
Gosh also depicts capitalism as ‘one of the principal
drivers of climate change’ (Fibisan, 2019). The Gun Island
sheds light on how industries continue to emit a lot of
renery, which is polluting the environment. As a result,
people are forced to expurgate the fruitful relationship
with the natural environment, and they have no choice
but to move to another country for a better life. Gun
Island’s environmental issues are rst triggered during
Deen’s trip to the Sundarbans as soon as he discovers
how climate change is disrupting the ecosystem of the
mangrove forest by affecting its ora and fauna. The
Sundarbans dwellers maintain a harmonious relationship
with nature. However, due to ecological disasters, they
migrate to other countries. Ghosh portrays those migrants
as “climate refugees” (Khan, 2024). Moyna’s words reveal
the predicaments of the climate refugees:
“the exodus of the young was accelerating every year:
boys and girls were borrowing and stealing to pay agents
to nd them work elsewhere. Some were slipping over
the border into Bangladesh, to join labour gangs headed
for the Gulf. And if that failed they would pay trafckers
to smuggle them to Malaysia or Indonesia, on boats”
(Ghosh, 2019).
The novel Gun Island makes a connection between
“the refugee inux into the Western world” and “the
environmental crisis outside the West” (Khan, 2024).
The rich can save themselves from climate disasters, but
the poor are helpless. Grewe-Volpp (2013) puts forward
that the rich can protect themselves from the “disturbing
and disorientating” climate pollution (Garrard, 2023,
p.13) whereas, “the majority of the poor,…. have no
possibilities to escape, but suffer from disease, crime,
drugs, and violence” (Grewe-Volpp, 2013). Garrard
(2023) postulates that the emissions from the rich nations
cause global warming, whilst the victims are the poor.
He further states that “in 2020, the UK, with the longest
record of historical emissions, was 11th least vulnerable
to climate change in the world, whilst the most vulnerable
was Chad, a country that has and is making a negligible
contribution to the crisis” (p.120). The poor are forced
to migrate, unable to survive the adverse environment
caused by climate change. Many become victims of
human trafcking while migrating. The issue of illegal
migration is brilliantly portrayed in the novel Gun Island.
In this novel, we see the procession of thousands of
migrants to Europe via Italy using the Mediterranean Sea.
Gilson’s (2022) view of “Anthropocene” (p. 270-271) is
relevant here in Gun Island as humans have to suffer from
climate change, whether they are the local poor of the
Sundarbans or the global rich of Los Angeles. Too often,
with the help of trafckers from different countries,
the young people of South Asia and Africa oat in the
Mediterranean Sea to fulll their dreams. This journey
has a brutal and breathtaking story. International agencies
such as BBC, International Organization for Migration
(IOM), Reuters, The Guardian, Arab News, and AL
Jazeera often highlight the perilous circumstances faced
by migrants travelling from the South to Europe via the
Mediterranean Sea. The “most active and hazardous
route” into the European countries is the Mediterranean
Sea, and since 2017, this route has been frequently used
by migrants from Asia and Africa (Cuddy, 2023). BBC
news reporter Alice Cuddy (2023) also assumes that the
number of migrant deaths is increasing day by day as
the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has
noted more than 1,800 deaths in the central Mediterranean
in 2023, in comparison to 1,400 for the entire 2022.
According to the report of UN refugee agency, over 2,500
people have lost their lives or vanished while attempting
to cross the Mediterranean into Europe in 2023, while
roughly 186,000 people have arrived in European nations
during the same time frame (“More than 2,500 dead”,
2023). Notably, the issues like “passports, visas, permits,
green cards and the like” (Ghosh, 2019) regulate human
migration. As a result, climate refugees are easily victims
of human trafcking. In Gun Island, Ra and Tipu cross
the borders of different countries like India, Pakistan,
Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Austria with
the help of human trafckers. They nally reach Venice,
Italy, risking their lives. Along the way, they met refugees
from different countries such as Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan,
Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Pakistan and others (p. 247).
Both Khokon of The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet
in Crisis and Bilal of Gun Island take shelter in Italy as
migrant workers. Their origin is Bangladesh. Similarly,
Bangladeshi climate refugee Lubna runs a business in
Venice. There is a market place next to Lubna’s ofce
in Italy where every migrant is Bengali, as the narrator
utters: “Yet, the men behind the counters were almost
all Bengali” (Ghosh, 2019). Ghosh can understand that
these people are “climate refuges” whether they see it or
not (Ghosh, 2021).
In Gun Island, one of the nest examples of climate
refugees is Gun Merchant. In search of fortune, he left
Bengal and took refuge in Venice. Moreover, we can
know the reason for his migration when Cinta tells an
apocryphal story: “The protagonist is a merchant, whose
homeland, in eastern India, is struck by drought and
oods brought on by the climatic disturbances of the
Little Ice Age; he loses everything including his family,
Ahmed
6
and decides to go overseas to recoup his fortune” (p.148).
Furthermore, according to boatmen Horen Naskar, the
Gun Merchant was affected by a drought which was
“so terrible that the streams, rivers and ponds had dried
up and the stench of rotting sh and dead livestock
had hung heavy in the air. Half the people had died of
starvation; parents had sold their children and people had
been reduced to eating carcasses and cadavers” (p.60).
As the narrative of the novel progresses, a trendy young
historian is found to be concerned with the environmental
apocalypse. He delivers a speech at a conference on
‘Climate and Apocalypse in the Seventeenth Century’. As
per the historian, the seventeenth century “was a period
of such severe climatic disruption that it was sometimes
described as the ‘Little Ice Age’. During this time
temperatures across the globe had dropped sharply, maybe
because of uctuations in solar activity…. earthquakes
had torn down cities and volcanoes…. millions had died:
in some parts of the world the population had declined
by a third. And everywhere there was talk of apocalypse:
the comets that were streaking through the heavens
were thought to be portents of the destruction of the
universe; even the creatures of the earth were believed
to be conveying warnings of catastrophe” (p.29). In the
seventeenth century, many people died from “famines,
droughts and epidemics”. The speaker’s primary claim is
that the current climatic problem began in the “Little Ice
Age” of the seventeenth century because it was then that
Londoners began to use coal as fossil fuels on a large
scale. The speaker points out that the emergence of
today’s “climate refugee” is a direct outcome of human
activity during the last four centuries (Khan, 2024).
4. The Torture Suffered by the Environmental
Groups
The notion of ‘environmentalism of the poor’ incurs
‘social justice’ (Schlosberg, 2007) and promises that the
battles for human rights and the environment are closely
attached (Martinez-Alier, 2014). The environmentalists
form social movements against environmental disasters.
For example, the rst social environmental movements in
the USA were carried out by the poor communities against
disparate environmental policy implementation in the
early 1980s. The movement was about a rapport between
pollution and poverty. Bullard (1993) further asserts that
the underdog groups experience the highest threats of
environmental calamity (p.167). Likewise, in Gun Island, an
alliance of environmental groups is formed to diminish
the pollution. Piya leads the environmental groups. This
Piya becomes the eyesore of the factory authorities in the
northern part of Sundarbans and Calcutta. Unfortunately,
some powerful people stand against the environmentalists
with the help of unscrupulous politicians as eminent
ecocritic Greg Garrad (2023), in his trope of “apocalypse”,
opines that the world is affected by ‘violence’ as well as
extreme ‘moral dualism’(p.98). A giant conglomerate of
devious people calls environmentalists “foreign agents”.
Moreover, funds for environmentalists drop. Many of the
environmentalists have to go to jail in false cases. They
are victims of prison oppression. Many of them fall prey
to personal assaults. They are tortured by paid goons
and policemen. Environmentalists have to face “death
threats, hate mail, constant trolling” (Ghosh, 2019).
It is very worrying that an entire community is facing
environmental degradation for the economic benet of
a few people.
5. Conclusion
The ecoconsciousness of the novel ‘Gun Island’ is
outstanding. Amitav Ghosh is widely known as a
quintessentially environmentalist. The plot of Gun
Island convoys innumerable environmental issues. He is
predominantly remembered for his depiction of human
and nonhuman sufferings due to climate disaster. The
Gun Island explicates that the climate refugee of the
“Global South” migrate to “Global North” to take
shelters. The occurrences of Los Angeles res, Dolphin
observation by GIS tracking, Venice tornadoes, cetaceans
beaching, tidal waves, yellow-bellied poisonous snakes
beaching on the West American coast, bark beetles,
shipworms, poisonous spider outbreaks, etc., have
cleverly reminded industrialized countries that if there is
a re in the city, the temple is not spared. So, it can be said
that the capitalist societies should take immediate steps
to reduce the emissions. Overall, Ghosh portrays the
plights of “disturbing and disorientating” environmental
pollution in Gun Island. To ensure environmental justice,
an innocuous atmosphere is a need for all humans and
nonhumans rather than a luxury equipment (Martinez-
Alier, 2014).
The migration of humans and nonhumans does not
follow any border or order. There are many tragic stories
behind the migration of climate refugees. Many become
victims of human trafcking. Many drown in the deep
sea. On the other hand, diversied nonhumans, such as
dolphins, crocodiles, shes, crabs are victims of beaching.
The environment is being polluted due to continuous
emissions from rich countries. It affects poor countries
either directly or indirectly. Unable to survive in the
hostile environment, the people of poor countries are
forced to migrate to rich countries in the hope of a better
life. The migration of climate refugees has again become
a headache for the rich as they have to face the refugee
crisis. The rich have to suffer the consequences of the
mass migration as they are responsible for climate change.
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