Amitav Ghosh: a writer's crusade for the planet and his views on Hong Kong, 'a phoenix that resurrects itself'

Against the raging background of conflicts driven by neocolonial pursuits and of climate catastrophes around the world – Amitav Ghosh, a world-renowned writer on colonialism and the planetary crisis, came to Hong Kong early this March. 

The recipient of prestigious literary awards including the Jnanpith Award and the Erasmus Prize, Ghosh is the author of the famous Ibis trilogy – a fictional expose of Western colonialism through the build-up to the First Opium War – and defining works of non-fiction such as The Great Derangement and The Nutmeg's Curse, which explore the inseparability of colonial extractivism from ecological destruction. 

This March, Ghosh visited the city for the Hong Kong International Literary Festival to promote his newest book of fiction, Ghost-Eye: a riveting tale of a girl born with "past-life memories," whose unusual powers came into play against human-inflicted devastations on the Sundarbans forest. 

In an exclusive interview with The Standard, Ghosh shared how extraordinary phenomena like past-life memories – a real, scientifically-documented condition – underscore the limitations of modern-day technocratic thinking. 

"[People] think that, essentially, everything in the world is knowable [and] can be manipulated or fixed with technology," he said. "I don't believe any of this at all. Because to me, the world seems an incredibly mysterious place."

To Ghosh, an ultra-rationalistic, technological attitude is the origin of most exploitative behaviors – including colonial extraction and environmental damage. "Until we come to some kind of reckoning with the incredible strangeness of the planet ..., we can never find ourselves going in the right direction."

In a world where technology is revered as the great panacea and nations race for technological dominance, Ghosh holds a starkly different view. On the ecological crisis, he said: "I don't think technology is going to solve the problem. In fact, the reliance on technology ... is the problem," examples being the energy- and water-intensive data centers and artificial intelligence that we now rely on so much. 

While a change of the prevailing worldview seems faraway, greener practices are the least nations can do. In this regard, Ghosh found China at the forefront. 

"The only country that has lived up to its promises [on sustainable practices] is China. … Their installation capacity of alternative energy is now more than the rest of the world put together," Ghosh noted, adding that China's reforestation in the northern deserts is happening "at scale."  

Ghosh sees an opposite trend in the United States, where he now lives. "The US has gone from prioritizing green technologies to actively repressing it," he critiqued. As to why it clings to unsustainable energy, he claimed that historically "Anglo-American power is founded on fossil fuels: not just the use of fossil fuels, but also the geopolitics of fossil fuels."

Hong Kong as 'a phoenix that resurrects itself'

An Oxford-bred doctor in social anthropology and an expert on colonial history, Amitav Ghosh has a wealth of knowledge about Hong Kong, once a British colony. The city is featured in some of his works, such as Flood of Fire and Smoke and Ashes.

"Hong Kong was founded with the intention of funneling opium towards China … and that's what made it possible for it to be a so-called 'free port.' I mean, who was it free for?" he said, signaling the British who sought to reverse their trade deficit by forcing the addictive substance on the Chinese market. "[The city] was basically an opium smuggling port."

But being taken advantage of was not the end of the city's story. "Hong Kong really embodies the contradictions of the modern era," Ghosh remarked. "[It] was founded, like Singapore, in order to facilitate the opium trade. … But it has gone beyond that now. It became something else, something quite different."

A frequent visitor to Hong Kong, Ghosh observed the city is today an "incredibly interesting, diverse, and creative place" with "a rich cultural life." "You could say Hong Kong is like a phoenix [that] resurrects itself," he said.

From pessimism to the duty of future-thinking

As institutions by which countries jointly tackle the ecological crisis crumble, being optimistic about the future seems impossible. But for Amitav Ghosh, an environmental writer-advocate, the idea of optimism-versus-pessimism diverts from the problem. 

"That is not the correct framing for me. Because I think we have to look upon it as our duty … whether or not things will actually get better," he said. "Our duty is to try and make it better."

That duty is owed to future generations, and Ghosh – in a secret manuscript submitted to the Future Library Project, an Oslo-based initiative that has gathered writings from famous writers around the world since 2014 and will only disclose them in 2114 – has demonstrated thinking for the future. 

The practice of thinking for the future switches up the "capitalist timeframe where you seek very short-term gains at the expense of the long term," Ghosh remarked. "The premodern world didn't think in this way. Say, the Venetian Republic was very dependent on wood … so they used to plant forests, thinking 100 years ahead, knowing that they would need more and more wood. They left these legacies to their children and grandchildren."

In this sense, the world is regressing: from forward-thinking to "the immediacy of profits," in Ghosh's words. Despite the dire ringing of alarms – with the last three years being the three hottest years on record, and as ecological breakdown continues to sweep across the globe – a mass change of mindsets is still yet to be seen. 

"I'm just a writer – what can I do? I can't change all of that," Ghosh said. "But in my writing, I certainly hope to hold up a different idea, a different [way of seeing] the world."