Re-Rooting the Green Feminine: The Postcolonial Ecology of Indian Womanhood in Markandaya, Divakaruni, and Lahiri

The evolution of Indian ecofeminism—from its early agrarian expressions to its transnational and post-ethnic articulations—reveals a dynamic negotiation between ecology, gender, and postcolonial identity. This paper explores how three seminal women novelists—Kamala Markandaya, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and Jhumpa Lahiri—redefine the relationship between women and nature through distinct historical and cultural contexts. While Markandaya's Nectar in a Sieve (1954) roots womanhood within the soil of a newly independent India struggling against modernisation, Divakaruni's The Mistress of Spices (1997) expands the ecofeminist imagination to the diasporic and mythic, foregrounding cross-cultural solidarities and ecological spirituality. Lahiri's The Namesake (2003) reconfigures ecological belonging through migration and hybridity, locating environmental consciousness within the flux of identity rather than in geographic fixity. Across these writers, Indian ecofeminism shifts from essentialist notions of woman-as-earth toward a pluralistic and post-ethnic ecology of selfhood, integrating local ecologies with global feminist ethics. Drawing on the theories of Vandana Shiva, Bina Agarwal, Karen Warren, and Tina Sikka, this study argues that Indian ecofeminist fiction transitions from cultural conservatism to an ecocritical pluralism that reconciles indigenous traditions with cosmopolitan modernity. Through close readings, the paper demonstrates that postcolonial ecofeminism is not merely a resistance discourse but a generative narrative strategy that re-roots womanhood in evolving landscapes—material, symbolic, and planetary.