Published Paper Details:

Ecocriticism as a critical practice emerged in the European and American literary domains in the 1990s. However, much earlier than this many writers had used this device unconsciously in their creation. One such creative head is Gopinath Mohanty, Winner of the first ever Sahitya Akademi Award (1955) for his novel, Amrutara Santana (1947) Born on April 20, 1914, in Nagabali, Cuttack. He joined the Odisha Administrative Service in 1938 and retired from the service in 1969. During his early posting in the Koraput District as an administrator, he came in close contact with the tribals ('Kondh' and 'Paraja' primarily) and took a special interest in learning their languages and life-style. Some of his major creative works of this time deal with tribal life and society. The paper will deal with Mohanty Gopinath's Paraja (1987), initially written in Odia by Gopinath Mohanty and translated to English by Bikram K Das in the year 1987. The novel accounts for the innocent Paraja tribe people living magnanimously with nature. The protagonist of this novel is Sukru Jani who has four children, two girls and two boys. This paper will dissect the intersection of gender, class and ethnicity in the story. This paper will primarily emphasize on climate change and its aftermath resulting in strong suffering for the Paraja community especially to Sukru Jani and his family. Keeping in view the dominance of haves over the have nots which ultimately resulted in mass hazards in the means of exploitation of women of the community, the Anthropocene attitude which eventually led to a famine resulting in food scarcity which in addition aggravated to community turmoil by showing the social hierarchy between the Sahukar, forest guard, village head and the poor Sukru Jani. In a nutshell this paper will cover and discuss the overall dimension of Ecocriticism via the tale of gender issues, class struggle, identity crisis and the Anthropocene for which there is huge impact and change in the geography of Sarsupadar (setting of the novel) along with the changes in the life of Sukru Jani who is the representative of the entire Paraja ethnic.