Indigenous Ecocentrism, Extraction and Environmental Injustice: Re-reading Sheela Tomy’s Valli as Responsive Literary Text

Abstract

Sheela Tomy’s Valli, published in Malayalam in 2019 and translated into English by Jayashree Kalathil in 2022, is an important eco-fictional narrative that narrates the history of the Wayanadan peoples’ intricate and spiritual connection to and reliance on the land and forest by emphasizing the river Kabani, the Wayanad flora and fauna, and the hamlet of Kalluvayal. Set in the hilly region known as ‘Wayanad’ in the state of Kerala in southern India, Valli is a story of a place and its people and environmental injustices through the memories of the characters, which traverses across four generations, from the 1970s to the present. The narrative illustrates how anthropogenic activities like deforestation and land encroachment have resulted in displacement and environmental migrants’ impacts on their means of subsistence. This paper examines how the destruction of the Wayanad forest causes forced displacement and dispossession of the Indigenous people from their immediate environment and how capitalist extraction of natural resources and ecological commodification cause an existential crisis in marginalizing the Indigenous epistemologies of nature. The paper analyzes how the novel Valli, as a responsive literary narrative, calls for an epistemic revival by convalescing the indigenous knowledge system that upholds the ethical connection between humans and the environment. Finally, the paper assesses how the steady encroachment of indigenous land and forest, and abrogation of their rights make Valli a responsive literary text against capitalist subjugation and sustained violence on the environment and people of Wayanad.