Postcolonial ecocritical reading of Satyajit Ray's Sikkim and Goutam Ghose's Padma Nadir Majhi

The study investigates how two films—Satyajit Ray’s documentary Sikkim (1971) and Goutam Ghose’s Padma Nadir Majhi (1993)—depict nature and environmental issues in postcolonial contexts, and how these representations challenge anthropocentric worldviews. Positioned within ecocinema and postcolonial ecocritical discourse, the paper asks how cinema can function as a mode of inquiry into human–nonhuman interdependence and environmental justice for marginalized communities. It situates the inquiry against prevalent cinematic trends that either misrepresent nature as fragile and subordinate to human control or aestheticize it without acknowledging socio-historical causes of degradation. By combining a documentary and a fictional narrative, the paper aims to broaden the scope of environmental film analysis, highlight ecological entanglements with class, power, and colonial legacies, and argue for ecocentric perspectives in postcolonial settings.

The paper synthesizes postcolonial ecocritical scholarship to frame cinema’s engagement with nature. It draws on DeLoughrey, Didur, and Carrigan to argue that environmental understandings are embedded in language, narrative, and history, and on Mukherjee’s eco-materialist notion of postcolonial environments as networks of human and nonhuman material existence shaped by historical capital. It critiques universalist ecological claims such as deep ecology (Naess), foregrounding Ramachandra Guha’s Third World critique that highlights overconsumption by industrial elites and the dehistoricization of nature. Huggan and Tiffin’s work is used to show how environmental issues are central to imperial projects and racial ideologies, while neoliberal continuities perpetuate extractivism and neo-colonialism. Sivaramakrishnan’s environmental history of colonial interventions (deforestation, displacement, disruption of traditional ecologies) underscores ongoing repercussions for marginalized communities. The review also engages ecocinema debates: Willoquet-Maricondi’s distinction between environmental films and ecocinema and her skepticism about Hollywood’s commercialism; counter-arguments by Rust and Monani about the mobilizing potential of popular cinema; and MacDonald’s case for avant-garde forms. Additional interlocutors (Soper, Reed, Haraway) inform the political, aesthetic, and ethical stakes of representing nature.

Qualitative, interpretive, and comparative film analysis grounded in postcolonial ecocriticism and ecocinema studies. The authors conduct close readings of two films from different modes (documentary and narrative feature) to examine how cinematic techniques (e.g., long shots, point-of-view shots, close-ups, pacing, soundscapes, framing, camera angles) and specific scenes articulate human–nonhuman relations, environmental justice, class, and colonial/neo-colonial power. The analysis situates textual details within historical and socio-political contexts (Sikkim’s ethno-nationalist period; riverine livelihoods on the Padma; modernization and capitalist extraction) and mobilizes theoretical lenses from postcolonial studies, eco-materialism, and environmental humanities to interpret themes of anthropocentrism, modernization, and displacement. No empirical datasets are used; instead, the study relies on textual evidence from the films, paratexts, and secondary scholarship.

• Both films foreground ecological interdependence and critique anthropocentric and colonial/neo-colonial logics.
• Sikkim (Ray): Through expansive vistas (Kanchenjungha), ethnographic observation of terraced agriculture, pastoral soundscapes, and POV shots, the film renders a harmonious human–nature relationship while exposing class divides and the infiltration of Western modernity (ropeway, Coca-Cola signage, imported liquors). Ray juxtaposes elite pageantry with commoners’ subsistence, revealing internalized colonial cultural habits and the persistence of feudal-capitalist hierarchies. Modernization appears alienating, tied to dislocation and ocularcentrism, and signals an unfinished decolonization marked by mimicry of ex-colonizers’ values.
• Padma Nadir Majhi (Ghose): The Padma River is depicted as life-giving yet exacting; close-ups of erosion, storms, and precarious livelihoods emphasize vulnerability and resilience among marginalized fishermen. The utopian island Moynadip, built by Hossain Miya, allegorizes neo-colonial extraction: deforestation, conversion of forests to agriculture, and labor exploitation sever communities from ancestral ecologies and endanger fauna. Class domination is shown via market relations (boat owners, exporters), coercion (Sital Babu), and the proletarianization of fishermen.
• Cinematic form matters: long shots, slow pacing, and attention to environmental sound cultivate contemplative, eco-centric spectatorship, aligning with ecocinema’s aims to decenter human subjectivity and foreground more-than-human worlds.
• The films connect environmental degradation with colonial histories, neoliberal continuities, and class power, demonstrating that environmental justice for subaltern communities is inseparable from critiquing imperial and capitalist structures.
• Policy and praxis touchpoints include recognition of local initiatives (e.g., Sikkim’s plastic bans) alongside ongoing challenges such as Padma River erosion and mangrove exploitation, underscoring gaps between ecological ideals and political-economic realities.

The analysis demonstrates that cinema can serve as a critical postcolonial ecocritical archive: by reading Sikkim and Padma Nadir Majhi together, the paper shows how visual strategies reveal intertwined ecological, cultural, and class dynamics obscured by anthropocentric or universalist ecological framings. Ray’s documentary exposes how modernization and residual coloniality fracture traditional ecologies in Sikkim, while Ghose’s feature dramatizes riverine precarity and neo-colonial extraction that dispossess fishermen and degrade forests. These readings support the research aim of illuminating human–nonhuman interdependence and linking environmental harms to historical and ongoing regimes of power. The findings reinforce critiques of deep ecology’s dehistoricization, advocating instead for context-sensitive, justice-oriented ecologies. They also strengthen ecocinema’s case for aesthetics that prompt contemplation and ethical engagement, bridging representation with environmental politics. Overall, the films exemplify how postcolonial societies’ continued adoption of ex-colonial values perpetuates alienation from nature, and how ecocentric cinematic forms can counter such narratives by centering marginalized voices and more-than-human agencies.

This study offers a comparative postcolonial ecocritical reading of Sikkim and Padma Nadir Majhi, showing how both films decenter human dominance, interrogate colonial and capitalist exploitation, and foreground the lived ecologies of marginalized communities. By analyzing form (long shots, POV, pacing) alongside sociopolitical context, the paper demonstrates cinema’s capacity to cultivate eco-centric perspectives and to connect environmental degradation with histories of empire, class power, and neoliberal extraction. The contribution lies in integrating ecocinema with postcolonial theory to articulate an ethics of representation attentive to environmental justice. Future research may extend this approach to a broader corpus across genres and industries (including popular cinema and eco-disaster films) to trace how environmental hegemonies shift over time and how different production modes mobilize audiences for ecological awareness and action.