Ecocritical tropes in jawaharlal nehrus select works a garrardian analysis

Abstract

The descriptive prose writings of both Jawaharlal Nehru and Greg Garrard reveal the elements of their earnest concern for environment and ecology, securing wilderness, promoting pastoral setting, showing impartiality towards animals, averting ecocide and appreciating nature. Ecocriticism as an approach helps people to understand and appreciate the bond between humans and nature that consists of various tropes like wilderness, pastoral, animals. Moreover, it also helps people understand the result of human actions against these tropes causing ecocide - pollution and apocalypse. This study aims at exploring and identifying the ecological principles in the select prose works of Nehru with reference to Garrard s classification of ecocritical tropes like wilderness, pastoral, animals, and pollution and apocalypse (ecocide). Wilderness signifies the state of nature unadulterated by civilization. Pastoral depicts the country with an implied or a clear contrast to the urban. Animals, as a trope, forms an important link in the chain of life on earth. Ecocide refers to the destructions caused by the humans and human world to Nature and the natural environment. As pollution and apocalypse are associated with each other, a common term ecocide is used in this thesis for elucidation. The impact of Man s greed on the environment is destructive, and man is innocent in not knowing the impact of his greed on himself. Nehru s Letters from a Father to His Daughter (1929), Glimpses of World History (1934), An Autobiography (1936), and The Discovery of India (1946) have been analyzed in the light of ecocritical tropes advocated by Greg Garrard. These works accentuate Nehru s reverence for wilderness and its soothing effect to troubled body and mind; they emphasize living in harmony with pastoral and express the excitement of fresh and pollution-free pastoral setting; they highlight the right of equality of all living beings in the ecology newline