Subaltern Eco-Consciousness: Traits of Sustainable Practices in Mahashweta Devi’s Chotti Munda and His Arrow

During the course of the 1990s, ecocriticism gains its relevance in literary studies and slowly spread wings across the world. As a theoretical approach, it tries to reveal the link between the fictional and the physical world. Despite the lack of any specific parameters or methods, it reflects the environmental questions as not simply a subject of aesthetics, politics, poetic or ethics. ‘Chotti Munda And His Arrow’ is Mahaswetha Devi’s first novel based on how the landowners or the upper-class people exploited the people and their environment. It reflects the struggles of the oppressed classes in India. The novel also reveals how these ethnic minorities treat their surrounding forest in a sustainable way without knowing any of the modern perceptions about the protection and conservation efforts of the ruling community. Ecocriticism is perhaps a latecomer in the field of academics but now its influence is inevitable in all discourses because humans have understood the importance of the environment. The paper tries to analyze how the Munda tribe consciously considers the environment in their day to day life and how they achieve co-existence with the surrounding forest.