Green Politics: (Re)Writing Environmental Heritage in Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh
Green Politics: (Re)Writing Environmental Heritage in Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh

Summary/Abstract: This essay investigates the extent to which Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Indian literature as a whole, address the challenge of ecocriticism’s attempt to preserve India’s dying ecological crisis. The novel nostalgically discusses possible dimensions from which Rushdie reconnects readers with the once beautiful environment in order to suggest alternatives that may inspire a nation’s caring for its fast dying environment. Given that ecocriticism attempts to link and synthesize literary criticism and the environment by examining the various ecological crises in eco-literary discourses, this paper discusses possible axioms where conceptual problems can be raised and suggests the need for an expansive ecological representation in literary discourses. The attempts to preserve the physical environment and paintings depicting eco-heritage suggest a green politic of national eco-consciousness. Such heritage conservation and preservation in literature reveals Rushdie’s composite vision of the future of the methods of living, habitation and habitats across geographical boundaries. Rushdie’s green politics which interrogates the role of literature in the discourse of the environment re-echoes artistic postcoloniality as an alternative view that requires the participation of everyone in conserving the degrading environment.

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