Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the laws, conflict and political participation in the Sundarbans Reserve Forest through the lens of environmental justice reinterpreted in anthropological studies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyzes the laws, conflict and political participation in the Sundarbans Reserve Forest through the lens of environmental justice reinterpreted in anthropological studies. Going beyond the nature-culture distinction, it includes nonhumans and the bio-physical entities in the common-world, and takes environment as intrinsically entangled and co-evolving with the society. Upon drawing anthropological literature, the paper seeks to critically examine the environment related laws in India and the indigenous people’s engagement with them. It explains the way the indigenous people of Sundarbans Reserve Forest do now subsist ‘between two fires’ - climate change and the forest conservation policies, and subsequently organizing protest over environmental injustices. On the other, it also explains how the rules underlying the relationship between humans and nonhumans are being reshaped in times of climate change. The question arises how the environment related polices are considering the rights of nonhumans. Do these policies reflect new anthropological understanding of environment? The paper uses the ethnographic material collected during the period of 2018-2019 on the issues of socio-environmental (in)justices that the indigenous people are facing in a few villages of Indian Sundarbans. Reinterpreting the ontological boundaries between humans, nonhumans and the physical entities, it reveals the way the local people who are contesting the governmental policies for environmental justices, as well as, the people in power would conceptualize the environment and the rights of nonhumans.