Unstable Homelands And Marginal Lives In Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide

Abstract

Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2004) locates the crisis of displacement within the tidal wilderness regions of the Sundarbans, a landscape known for the perpetual ecological instability. This article examines how Ghosh configures the idea of homeland as an unstable thing, always contested, and politically vulnerable for the marginal communities who deliberately inhabit this particular region. It inevitably has  drawn towards postcolonial timelines, subaltern studies, and ecological frames; the article traces how the novel’s central characters, Fokir, Piya, Nirmal, and Kusum, struggle for survival and save their belongings. It shows the erasure happens within a space where the state simultaneously exploits and abandons the people. The Morichjhãpi massacre is also a central terrible event that is read as the novel’s core trauma where the state's conservation agenda becomes the major instrument of violence against its most naive citizens. The article further explores how Ghosh uses the terms "memory," "narrative fragmentation," and "ecological imagery" to expose the external forces that affect marginal lives and make them disposable. Ultimately, The Hungry Tide is not merely an ecological novel but interiorly a sustained critique on power and forced displacement.