HYDROCOLONIALITY AND THE BLUE HUMANITIES: MAPPING OCEANIC MEMORY AND COLONIAL AFTERLIVES IN CONTEMPORARY INDIAN NOVELS

Povzetek

The emergence of the Blue Humanities has signalled a critical departure from terrestrial biased literary analysis, prompting a thorough re-evaluation of the ocean not merely as a passive backdrop or a metaphorical void, but as an active material cultural agent that shapes histories, subjectivities and epistemologies. By synthesizing the theoretical frameworks of hydrocolonialism, defined as the colonization of, on, or by means of water and material ecocriticism, which recognizes the narrative agency of storied matter, this paper examines how contemporary Indian Anglophone and regional novels map oceanic memory and the enduring afterlives of colonial maritime exploitation. Focusing on Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy (Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire) alongside his tidal fictions, and Joe D’Cruz’s regional Tamil masterpiece Aazhi Soozh Ulagu (Ocean Rimmed World), this study illuminates how these narratives decenter hegemonic terracentrism. It explores the material realities of the Indian Ocean as a repository of historical trauma, tracing the oceanic routes of the indentured labor system, the imperial opium trade, and the violent crossings of the kala pani. Concurrently, the paper analyzes how littoral communities, specifically the Parathavar fisherfolk of the Tuticorin coast, articulate indigenous wet ontologies that resist both colonial cartographies and neo-hydrocolonial state infrastructures. By examining the linguistic creolization of Laskari jargon and diglossic coastal dialects, this study argues that these novels produce a fluvial poetics that reclaims subaltern agency below the waterline, offering a radical, decolonial framework for understanding the relational fluidities of the Anthropocene.