LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 26:1 January 2026
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Selvi M. Bunce, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
         Nathan Mulder Bunce, M.A., Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Honorary Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

Celebrate India!
Unity in Diversity!!

HOME PAGE

Click Here for Back Issues of Language in India - From 2001

Poetic Encounter
Available in https://www.amazon.in/dp/B09TT86S4T

Poems
Naked: the honest musings of two brown women
Available in https://www.amazon.in

Decrees
Available in https://www.amazon.com

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIALS

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2025
M. S. Thirumalai

Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
11249 Oregon Circle
Bloomington, MN 55438
USA
Custom Search

Turning the World Upside Down: Carnivalesque, Eco-Humour and Environmental Critique in Rohan Chakravarty's Green Humour for a Greying Planet and Pugmarks and Carbon Footprint

Sohini Naiya
Archana and
Dr. Smriti Singh

Abstract

This research situates Rohan Chakravarty's Green Humour for a Greying Planet and Pugmarks and Carbon Footprints within a rigorous interdisciplinary framework, synthesizing Mikhail Bakhtin's Carnivalesque, Arne Naess's Deep Ecology, and edutainment. It addresses a salient lacuna in ecocritical scholarship: the marginalization of graphic satire as a formidable mode of environmental thought. The study contends that “green humour” functions as a sophisticated ecocritical strategy and a radical form of eco-activism. By leveraging Bakhtinian mechanisms—specifically hierarchy reversal and the de-crowning of anthropocentric authority—Chakravarty exposes systemic hypocrisies in global conservation. Through the lens of edutainment, the analysis demonstrates how complex data is translated into an accessible affective register, bypassing “environmental fatigue” to foster ethical engagement. Ultimately, the subversive laughter of the carnival serves as a regenerative force, affirming Deep Ecology principles and transforming existential despair into a resilient public environmental consciousness.

Keywords:Rohan Chakravarty, Carnivalesque,, Deep Ecology, graphic satire

Introduction

Climate change and animal-related issues are frequently addressed as separate concerns in dominant media narratives and policy frameworks, despite their deep structural entanglement. Empirical research demonstrates that animal husbandry is a major contributor to environmental degradation, accounting for nearly 26% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and thus playing a significant role in accelerating climate change (Poore and Nemecek 2018). The IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land (2019) further reinforces this connection by indicating that plant-based diets can substantially reduce emissions when compared to diets reliant on animal products, although political and ideological resistance continues to impede recognition of the animal agriculture sector's responsibility in the climate crisis (Lahsen 2017). Simultaneously, large-scale land-use change driven by agricultural expansion has placed terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems under severe pressure, with approximately one million species currently facing the threat of extinction (S. Díaz et al. 2019). Climate change compounds this biodiversity crisis by disrupting essential ecological processes such as pollination and carbon storage carried out by birds, insects, and small mammals (Schmitz et al. 2018). In response to the difficulty of communicating these interconnected crises, climate fiction has emerged within ecocriticism as a critical narrative mode capable of rendering complex environmental realities more legible and affectively resonant. Scholars such as Buell (2001), Heise (2008), and Ghosh (2016) advocate narrative frameworks that foreground global interdependence and eco-cosmopolitan environmentalism in order to address the uneven risks posed by climate change. Situated within this literary and visual tradition, Rohan Chakravarty's climate change comic books Green Humour for a Greying Planet (2021) and Pugmarks and Carbon Footprint (2023), disseminated through digital platforms such as Instagram, offers a satirical yet incisive engagement with ecological breakdown. By foregrounding animals as central figures, the comics articulate climate change through their symbolic resonance, ecological vulnerability, and material agency, thereby reframing environmental degradation as a multispecies crisis and establishing a critical space for rethinking human–animal relations in the Anthropocene.

There is an urgent need for effective conservation communication, particularly because wildlife and ecological crises lack the visibility mechanisms available to celebrities or politicians, who can manufacture controversies or media spectacles to remain in public attention. Nonhuman lives and ecosystems, by contrast, cannot speak, perform, or compete within attention-driven media economies. This communicative gap necessitates creative intermediaries who can translate ecological urgency into accessible public discourse. Artists such as Rohan Chakravarty function as such spokespersons by mobilizing humour, satire, and anthropomorphism to give animals a public voice. As environmental communication scholars argue, conservation narratives gain traction when they are emotionally engaging and culturally resonant rather than purely informational (Nisbet, 2009). Chakravarty's comics exemplify this approach by transforming animals into witty commentators on their own precarity, thereby sustaining visibility for conservation issues without resorting to sensationalism. In doing so, his work demonstrates how creative mediation can counter the structural invisibility of wildlife within contemporary media cultures and reframe conservation as a matter of shared ethical and social responsibility with light and humorous mood which he terms “Green Humour”.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Sohini Naiya (M.A.)
Indian Institute of Technology Patna
sohini.95.4248@gmail.com

Archana (M.A.)
Indian Institute of Technology Patna
archanaiitp@gmail.com
&
Dr. Smriti Singh (Ph.D.)
Indian Institute of Technology Patna
Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian/South Asian scholarship.