Ecological Migration: An Ecocritical Study of Padma Nadir Majhi

Abstract

Manik Bandyopadhyay2 in the Padma Nadir Majhi depicted the struggling lives of the inhabitants of the fictional village Ketupur and nearby villages on the banks of the Padma. The objective of this study is to explore how the lives of the characters in this novel are impacted by natural disasters such as river erosion, storms, and floods. Moreover, due to climate change, many people from the fishing community of Ketupur want to leave their village and some of the residents have already left Ketupur and migrated to Hossain Mian’s fictional island Moyna Dweep. Therefore, the study also attempts to discover how natural disasters are to blame for this migration. Through the lens of ecocriticism, this paper will try to answer how climate change is responsible for the characters’ misfortune and why they are forcefully displaced from their motherland.

Keywords: Padma Nadir Majhi, Ecological Migration, Ecocriticism, Climate Change,