Crisis, constitutionalism and the geographies of belonging: Indian eco-politics in the Anthropocene. Issue 1 (2nd January 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Tella, Ramya K.
• Is Part Of: Journal of the Indian Ocean region. Volume 16:Issue 1(2020)
• Page Start: 63
• Page End: 78
• Publication Date: 2020-01-02
• Subjects: Anthropocene -- climate crisis -- Indian constitution -- eco-politics; Indian Ocean Region -- Politics and government -- Periodicals; Indian Ocean Region -- Strategic aspects -- Periodicals; Indian Ocean Region -- Periodicals; Politics and government; Strategic aspects of individual places; Indian Ocean Region; Periodicals; 320.91824
• DOI: 10.1080/19480881.2020.1704981
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1948-108X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The Anthropocene – as a geological and cultural epoch – brings with it new modes of articulating environmental crisis and citizenship for peoples in India. This essay illustrates how space, scale and identity can be located within contemporary climate political imaginations through the normative canvas of the Indian Constitution. It argues that by thinking about climate change as a collection of dualisms – past/present, near/faraway, futures/futurelessness – Indian vocabularies of constitutionalism can inform authoritative understandings of crisis and citizenship. The article makes use of empirical material collected between 2016–17 for the author's doctoral research. It argues that Indian climate change elites characterize crisis in distinctive ways that draw attention to the symbolic and material implications of interrogating the shifting geographies of belonging in India. It shows how they make use of a framework of constitutionalism that is simultaneously attentive to the semantics of both planetary and subaltern thinking in the Anthropocene.