“WOMAN TO WOMAN, FIGHTER TO FIGHTER”: AN ECO-FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF BINA SHAH’S THE MONSOON WAR

Abstract

This article critically examines eco-feminist issues highlighted in Bina Shah’s novel The Monsoon War (2023) by employing the theoretical concepts postulated by Ynestra King. The current study presents the ecological crisis in the context of socio-political agendas purported by a hegemonic patriarchal system set against women as well as natural resources. Futuristic climate disasters reveal how male-dominance and state power operate through a hierarchical model to regulate both Punjab’s rivers and women’s capacity to reproduce. Under the lens of eco-feminism, the research demonstrates that Shah critiques the patriarchal viewpoint which perceives both natural environments and female bodies as commodities for control, engineering, and demographic use. This research draws on Ynestra King’s eco-feminist concerns presented in her essay entitled The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology (1989). This essay is marked by King’s revolutionary eco-feminist ideas that challenge the militarism and male-dominance strategies adopted to subjugate women and take control of natural resources. In The Monsoon War (2023), Shah envisions alternative modes of resistance in Diya’s commitment to safeguarding seeds, passing down oral narratives, and sustaining a direct relationship with rain, which mirror King’s ethics of ecological renewal. The novel’s epilogue, where the collapse of dams coincides with women recovering their voices, emphasizes that healing the land and liberating women are interlinked processes. In this way, Shah transforms the war narrative into a story centered on nurturing, remembrance, and ecological equilibrium.