Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishath and environmental discourses a marxist ecological study

Abstract

The post-millennial developments in Marxist ecological studies reveal that Marx and Engels had a holistic view regarding the place of human beings in a natural environment but in the twenty-first century, the profound insights of these philosophers about capitalist destruction of nature and its consequences contributes to the critical understanding of environmental issues. This study is a Marxist Ecological reading of the environmental activism of the organization named KSSP, its critique of capitalism, opposition to privatization of land and other natural resources, encouragement of sustainable development concept, and its approach and activism that establishes an interface between science, society and environment. KSSP emerged as a people s science movement with a visible influence of this ideology during 1960s. Thus the concept of sustainable human development became the fundamental aspect of environmental approach of Ecological Marxism and KSSP. Even though Marxist Ecology as a discipline developed and established itself much later to the establishment of KSSP and Kerala, despite being a region which has had a long history of Marxist movements both in socio-cultural and political spheres, its environmental perspectives are hardly explored or discussed. In this context, the study argues that KSSP, as an organization with clear affiliations to Marxism as a socialist ideology, has approached environmental discourses in Kerala from a perspective endorsed in the writings of Marx and Engels newline