Ecologies of Memory and Displacement in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide

Abstract

This paper critically examines Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide through the intersecting lenses of memory studies, ecocriticism, and eco-postcolonial theory, highlighting the complex relationships between the  displacement, ecology, and ethical responsibility. This paper focuses on the ecologically fragile Sundarbans; the novel presents the landscape not merely as a physical background but as a living archive that bears witness to the silenced histories of resetting, state violence, and marginal survival. The study asserts that Ghosh reconceptualizes nature as an active agent in preserving cultural memory, particularly in the erased history of the Morichjhapi massacre, which lives through oral narratives, ecological traces, and embodied knowledge rather than official historiography.

The novel explores ecology as a site of remembrance, the paper shows how environmental spaces challenge linear and the state-sanctioned historical narratives. Displacement in The Hungry Tide is shown to employ on multiple levels cultural,physical ,psychological, and epistemological moving fisherfolk, refugees,and indigenous communities whose exist are rendered precarious by exclusionary conservation of policies. The novel  interrogates human–nonhuman relationships and complicates ethical binaries by representing rivers, animals, and tides as contributors in shared ecological existence. Through the characters such as Fokir and Piya, Ghosh variations indigenous ecological knowledge with technocratic environmentalism by exposing the moral limitations of discussion models that ignore social justice.

The paper contends that The Hungry Tide advances an moral ecology rooted in interdependence, coexistence, and historical accountability. By combining ecological consciousness with memory and displacement, the novel appears as a significant eco-postcolonial text that resonates with contemporary discussion surrounding environmental injustice, climate change, and forced migration., The study affirms literature’s capacity to recover the silenced pasts and to remake more inclusive and the humane ecological futures.