Aligning the Margins: Indigenous Commons and Planetary (in)Justice in Siddhartha Sarma’s Year of the Weeds

Abstract

In South Asia, deforestation, mining, damming, and the construction of toxic industries have significantly impacted the poor and other marginalised communities. The extraction of natural resources embeds the promise of a nation’s economic prosperity; however, the development excludes those who bear the brunt of extractive operations. Such exclusionary practices dispossess Indigenous communities from the history of Anthropos. This exemplifies that the ‘deep colonising’ practices, co-existing with so-called ‘development’ (Rose 1999), characterise the postcolonial nations. The current research strives to analyse the vulnerable conditions of such communities contesting in the margins of India through a study of Siddhartha Sarma’s Year of the Weeds (2018). The novel is about central India’s Indigenous people, the Gonds, and the dire conditions they confront as a result of the government’s policy of displacing them from their native land to mine bauxite. In this context, the present paper aims to examine how neocolonial forces such as the state and mining companies impose ‘climate coloniality,’ (Sultana 2022) relying on racial discrimination, state-aided violence, uneven distribution and consumption of material riches. The paper also seeks to explicate how the numerous ramifications of planetary crises raise the issue of planetary (in)justice, and how addressing these concerns about unjust practices may align the marginalised communities within the dominant political scenario.