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This paper examines Mahasweta Devi’s Chotti Munda and His Arrow as a narrative of tribal identity, resistance, and ecological consciousness. The novel is read as a collective history of indigenous struggle, tracing the continued exploitation of tribal communities from colonial to post-independence India. It highlights how systemic marginalization, land alienation, and industrial expansion disrupt both cultural identity and environmental balance.
The paper’s central contribution is to read the novel specifically through the lens of ecocide-understood as the large-scale destruction of ecosystems leading to the displacement and marginalization of dependent communities -rather than through a general ecocritical approach. Drawing on the concept of ecocide alongside Nixon’s slow violence, Shiva’s developmental violence and Guha and Gadgil’s environmental justice framework, the paper demonstrates how these distinct but complementary frameworks illuminate different dimensions of ecological destruction in Devi's narrative. The paper further contends that tribal resistance in the novel is not only political but also ecological, rooted in an alternative worldview that emphasizes coexistence rather than domination. Ultimately, the study positions Devi as a writer-activist who foregrounds subaltern voices while articulating an indigenous ecological ethic relevant to contemporary debates on development and sustainability.
Dr. Bosudha Bandyopadhyay. “Ecocide and Identity: Tribal Resistance in Mahasweta Devi’s Chotti Munda and His Arrow.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 408-426. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.26.
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