Ecological Crisis and Earth Democracy in the Select Short Stories of Temsula Ao

The ecological foundation sets the bedrock for the living of all beings. It creates an integrated way of living in harmony with all beings. But this foundational bedrock gets shattered out of human’s sheer living on the basis of binary approach, i.e., binary between man and nature, nature and culture, major and minor, etc. This Western binary approach towards living causes the sheer crisis in the ecological bedrock and often leads to ecological catastrophe. In countering the binary approach and ecological crisis the article attempts to explore an alternative ecological approach by taking into account the short stories of Temsula Ao. It would be based on her collection of short stories, These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone (2006), Laburnum for My Head: Stories (2009), and The Tombstone in My Garden: Stories from Nagaland (2022). In exploring the ecological crisis, the article shows how the plants respond to the crisis and fight back the human intervention and domination in the ecological bedrock of nature. In analysing the counter approach of the plants to human rule and governance, it also aims to explore the idea of ‘earth democracy’ as propounded by the environmental activist, Vandana Shiva in her Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (2010). The article shows how the ecological crisis not only makes nature protest against men’s domination but also creates a space to emerge the consciousness of interconnectedness among all beings on the part of human beings. In taking into account Shiva’s ecological approach of ‘earth democracy’ or ‘vasudhaiva kutumbkam’ (the earth family) it aims to reconstruct the idea of plant subjectivity in the arena of ecocritical reading of literature.