Sankha Shubhra Mandal
Independent Researcher
Abstract
Biopolitics, as conceptualized by Mitchell Foucault, deals with the sovereign’s regulation of population or man as a biological species. With the increasing climate change and shortage of natural resources in the anthropocene, biopolitics has become a pivotal factor in the organization of a nation state. Prayaag Akbar sets the action of his novel Leila in a dystopian world , a world ravaged by climate change crises , disasters and storage of essential natural equipments like water and fresh air, where biopolitics or regulation of population is very important. The novel is set in the late 2040s when India doesn’t cease to be governed by a democratic government , rather it is ruled by The Council, an autocratic governmental body that regulates the life of its subjects sternly. The society is divided into fractions as walled communities fueled by religious impetus and purity. This facilitates the sovereign to employ its biopolitics, to preserve and nourish the privileged classes at the expense of others’ lives. Through the story of Shalini, the protagonist of the novel, in search of her daughter Leila who was abducted , Prayaag Akbar has skillfully delineated the grievous affects of climate change and presented how it ultimately leads to an alarmingly nightmarish world. The purpose of this paper is to show Akbar’s representation of biopolitics and climate change crises in his devout novel Leila.
Keywords: Biopolitics, population, climate change, dystopia, sovereign, Shalini.
Introduction: With the increasing climate change in the anthropocene, there is a plethora of climate fiction narratives. Consequently, there is a growing demand for a closer inspection of these literary texts from the perspective of climate change and human suffering due to its ominous outcomes. Prayaag Akbar, a renowned journalist and professor, is most notable for his debut novel Leila, a dystopian fiction that focuses on the grievous affects of climate change and the politics resulting from it. Leila, first published in 2017, is undoubtedly a clarion call to the 21st century modern man to join the environmental consciousness movement spreading across the globe because of Global Climate Change and its ominous outcomes. The novel can be taken as a kind of premonition of the ill omens of the near future. Climate politics is of the essential elements of the novel and it is this aspect of the novel that makes it worthy of critical study. This climate politics is closely associated with the sovereign’s regulation of its subjects in the novel. In other words, Foucault’s concept of ‘biopolitics’ or the regulation of population plays a pivotal role in the development of the plot of the novel. The setting of the novel is India of the late 2040s which is repeatedly mentioned as the ‘Aryavarta’. But what makes the setting unique is that it is no longer the land of communal harmony and peace. The Indian milieu is not only polluted by the disastrous affects of climate change but also by the smoke of communalism, casteism and social, political and religious hatred. In the midst of severe crisis of natural resources, the protagonist, Shalini, undergoes a series of adventures in search of the eponymous character, Leila, her daughter. The novel represents the grievous affects of climate change and biopolitics in the anthropocene through her journey and encounters.
The novel presents a pen picture of a dystopian world, a world ravaged by climate change crises, shortage of natural resources and social, political and religious turmoil. The political leaders have formed a protected nation of their own, the ‘Aryavarta’, which is divided into segments to protect the purity of class, community and religion. The supreme leader of the state Mr. Joshi makes the entire nation to believe in the slogan “purity for all”. The society is divided into fractions as walled communities and movement from one segment to another is strictly prohibited except people with special permission. The government provides essential natural equipments like water and fresh air only to the privileged classes and others have to depend on the mercy of the leaders. On the one hand, there are numerous air-conditioned tall buildings and on the other hand, there are burning slums with extreme poverty, hunger and thirst. To protect Aryavarta from the upcoming dangers due to climate change, the political leaders like Mr. Joshi and Mr. Rao have planned to build a ‘skydome’ that will protect the environment from UV rays, extreme heat and other climatic disasters. To execute this plan Mr. Joshi has handpicked Mr. Dixit who is working on the skydome project. But there is also a resistance movement within the Aryavarta. This resistance group with the help of Shalini, who is appointed as a servant in Mr. Dixit’s house, gathers important information about the skydome project. It is found that the skydome project will result in an apocalypse to the people outside the dome. Its function is similar to that of an air-conditioner. While keeping the temperature inside the dome low and providing fresh air to the people inside the dome, the skydome will extract extreme heat and polluted air outside it through its vents which will destroy the outer atmosphere, cause disaster conflagration and ultimately cause extinction of human life in the surrounding areas. Thus the skydome becomes a crucial symbol of biopolitical otherisation.
Shalini’s quest for her daughter, Leila, is the sole impetus of the plot of the novel. At first we find that Shalini, a Hindu woman, is married to Rizwan, a Muslim which is against the rule of Aryavarta and is considered as a sin. So their daughter Leila is a child of mixed blood which is at loggerheads with the purity law of Aryavarta. Rizwan’s own brother Naz is also not happy with their marriage and their child. However, Shalini and Rizwan starts to live separately away from their families where there is still some harmony and peace. But this doesn’t last long as the hooligans, known as the ‘Repeaters’ attack on them. Their apparent sin is that they filled their pool with water illegally amid such water crisis. The hooligans kill Rizwan and abduct Leila. Shalini is then taken to a Purity Camp as a punishment of her sins. However, later it is found that it was Naz who was in league with the Repeaters and sent the hooligans there. In the Purity Camp Shalini has to follow the strict codes and conducts of the camp which are the processes to become pure and to cleanse the previous sins. Finally, Shalini succeeds in escaping from the camp and meets a young girl like her daughter. They together explore some dilapidated, burning slum areas but this girl is also separated from Shalini and she is caught by the members of the Aryavarta and is taken back to the camp. Then she is appointed as a servant in the house of Mr. Dixit, the chief engineer of the Skydome project. It is highly ironic that Shalini who once used to lead a prosperous life and had servants herself becomes a maid servant in someone’s house. While staying there she sends important information to the resistance group about the skydome project. When Mr. Dixit is taken away from his home, Shalini helps Mrs. Dixit to the best of her abilities. Then she is appointed as a servant in Mr. Rao’s house, one of the chief leaders of the Aryavarta and who wants to take away the power from Mr. Joshi and himself wants to be the chief leader of the state. Shalini gradually wins the confidence of Mr. Rao and gets the opportunity to enter into the skydome inauguration function where her daughter Leila is supposed to perform. Shalini has already discovered that her daughter Leila is now with her previous maid Sapna who now enjoys luxuries and privileges which Shalini once used to enjoy as her husband is now a close person of the chief leader Mr. Joshi. However, Leila is now transformed into a devout follower of Aryavarta. She has been brainwashed and she now doesn’t recognize Shalini. Thus though Shalini’s quest for her daughter ends, she doesn’t get the company of her daughter.
Water crisis is one of the prominent affects of climate change and in this novel, as mentioned earlier, it is also responsible for Shalini’s catastrophe at the beginning. Water is no longer available to everyone, rather it is highly costly. Rapid industrialization has reduced the ground water level into zero and the available water is so much polluted that it is of no use now. We find instances of black water coming out of the taps. The common people has to struggle hard to fetch water. They stand in never ending queues for a sip of water. Thus the novel’s nightmarish world is intensified with the representation of severe crisis of water without which life is impossible. But what makes this water crisis worst is the sovereign’s regulation of population to privilege certain classes which in turn takes the lives of others. Thus water remains a constant symbol of discrimination throughout the novel. This highlights the fact that in the past though water was a symbol of caste discrimination, it ceases to be a symbol of discrimination even in the late 2040s.
So it becomes very evident that in Prayaag Akbar’s Leila a kind of politics is starkly related to the climate change crises and its management by the sovereign through the regulation of its population. Mitchell Foucault was the first to introduce the concept of ‘bio-power’ or what he calls the power of the sovereign over life and death. This power can be divided into two categories: an anatomo-politics of the human body and a biopolitics of the population. The former one is associated with the training of the body or making it efficient to perform several activities of the state. On the other hand, the latter one is associated with the species body, imbued with the mechanics of life and serving as the basis of biological processes: propagation, births and mortality, life expectancy etc. Leila seems to be a clear reflection of these issues. Here we find instances of both these aspects of bio-power. The Purity Camps seem to be training centres where the women who previously violated the rules of Aryavarta are trained to work for the development of the state. Through the renouncement of the material comforts and working hard for the state they become pure. Their employment as servants in various sectors is part of their penance. Thus these camps work as anatomo-political tools for the state. Again, the narrative is surcharged with instances of the government’s strict regulation of its subjects. The primary division that the leaders of Aryavarta make between people is that of Aryavarta citizen the other. The citizens or followers of Aryavarta are the privileged people though they are strictly controlled by the state. Though they are the citizens of an independent country and they have social, political and religious freedom, they are strictly regulated by the internal mechanisms of Aryavarta. This especially relates Leila to Foucault’s concept of biopolitics in which freedom itself functions as a domain of rule or regulation. The people , on the other hand, who are marked as the others or the non-followers of Aryavarta are the marginalized people. They are not only deprived of their fundamental rights but also denied of their access to natural resources. Painted in the hands of the Aryavarta people, the tattoo which acts as a kind of passport for them, is a clear signifier of the otherisation of the lower class people by the state. The walls built between the communities act as both concrete and metaphoric walls. They are not only physical walls that divide people and restrict them from social intercourse, they are rather metaphoric that serves to create distinction, division, unrest between people socially, politically, economically and aesthetically. Thus these walls are not the fences that leads to the mutual hospitality between communities. The skydome that the leaders of Aryavarta want to built to protect the environment of Aryavarta from climatic disasters is the ultimate symbol of discrimination and otherisation of the poor people by the state. The leaders know that the skydome project will result in numerous deaths outside the dome but they don’t care. They are ready to sacrifice these people for their self-interest. One of the chief interests of the novel is the eponymous character Leila who was abducted in her very early childhood as she was a child of mixed blood. The hooligans known as the ‘Repeaters’ are nothing other than an oblique mechanism of the state to employ its sovereign power and bio-power sternly on those who are at odds with the codes and conducts of the new Aryavarta. These hooligans use to abduct the mixed blood children and then they sell them to the upper class people at very high prices and even these children are sometimes brutally murdered by them. Leila is one such mixed blood child who was abducted in her early childhood and then she is tended by Sapna, Shalini’s maid servant, who later became very rich and powerful because of her husband’s close association with Mr. Joshi. But even the chief leader of the state, Mr. Joshi doesn’t have the knowledge that Leila is a child of mixed blood as in the report it is mentioned that Leila was killed and Sapna and her husband make the false narrative that Leila is their own daughter. Though they ultimately confess to Shalini that the girl whom they are claiming as their own daughter is originally Leila, Shalini’s lost daughter. But Sapna warns Shalini that if the leaders of the Aryavarta come to know that this girl is Shalini’s daughter, a girl of mixed blood, they will kill her and Shalini cannot give her a bright future. So it is better for her to stay with Sapna and her husband. Thus it seems quite impossible for Shalini to free herself from the evil clutches of the state and to regain everything she lost. In the novel birth, death, propagation, life expectancy etc. , the basic biological processes of human beings are controlled by the state through the use of political, social and religious institutions and mechanisms. Thus though the narrative of Prayaag Akbar’s Leila solely deals with the various expeditions of Shalini and her desperate search for her daughter Leila, a close reader cannot miss the subtle nuances of biopolitical otherisation within the novel and the skillful depiction of human misery in the anthropocene due to climate change.
Conclusion: The nightmarish world of Prayaag Akbar’s Leila thus faithfully represents the grievous affects of climate change and the insufferable pain and pathetic condition of the people due to the ominous affects of biopolitics on human life. It is important to delve deep into the climate change narratives in the recent times because Global Climate Change has now become common knowledge and the current scenario demands study on climate fictions. In this respect, this study on Prayaag Akbar’s Leila is really worth doing. Leila advances existing knowledge on climate change and its affects in a unique way by highlighting those issues in the light of Foucault’s concept of ‘biopolitics’ in the narrative of the novel. It has incorporated biopolitics as an important element of climate change literature. From the perspective of the researcher, a fundamental assumption regarding the efficacy of climate change narratives, like Leila, is that such narratives must be viewed as providing a foundation in the study of climate change and the human suffering and loss of life that it causes. The goal should be to provide sustainable solutions for the betterment of mankind. Above all, the climate fiction narratives, like Prayaag Akbar’s Leila, and the study of such narratives play a very significant role in the development of humanity.
Works Cited
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Wilton, Demi. “‘We are the Dispossessed’: Displacement, Knowledge Production and Bare Life in West Bengali Climate Fiction.” Parallax 27.3 (2021): 344-361.
Shankha Shubhra Mandal is a student of English literature. He completed B.A (Honours) in English from Jhargram Raj College (Vidyasagar University) in 2020 and M.A in English from the Department of English, Vidyasagar University in 2022. He has also qualified the UGC NET with JRF in 2022 and also the 23rd West Bengal SET in the same year.
