Dwelling in Dispossession: Caste, Ecological Alienation, and Solastalgia in Perumal Murugan’s Seasons of the Palm and Pyre

This study examines how Perumal Murugan’s Seasons of the Palm and Pyre represent the relationship between caste, ecology, and psychological suffering through the concept of solastalgia. While solastalgia is often understood in relation to environmental destruction or climate-related loss, this study argues that Murugan’s narratives expand its meaning by showing how ecological distress can also arise from caste-based exclusion, spatial control, and the denial of belonging within one’s own surroundings. In these narratives, rural landscapes are not neutral settings but socially organised environments shaped by labour, hierarchy, surveillance, and everyday forms of violence. Through the experiences of Shorty and Saroja, the study shows how nature functions as a space that both sustains life and regulates access to it. From Dalit psycho-ecological perspectives, the study argues that ecological suffering in Murugan’s narratives is inseparable from the caste structures. The study further suggests that environmental justice in the Indian context must account for caste as a central force shaping ecological experience. Ultimately, Murugan’s narratives highlight that ecological grief is also social grief and that questions of land, place, and belonging are deeply tied to the structures of power, calling for a more inclusive understanding of ecological thought that recognises these entangled realities.