Excrement and Waste: Examining the Ramifications of the Municipal Infrastructures and the Problem of Global Eco-Cosmopolitism in Malik Sajad’s Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir

Abstract

This essay challenges the equity of eco-cosmopolitism, which Patrick Hayden defines as a socio-political “world environmental citizenship” (2010, 368). Isabelle Stengers, among others, recommends an ecological “cosmopolitical proposal”– a global checks and balances system (2005, 1003). In response, I argue that eco-cosmopolitism merely dredges up the same criticism of inequality and social injustice already problematized against Kant’s “civil commons.” Examining Malik Sajad’s Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir (2015), I explore the cultural narrative concerning the hazardous disposal of waste in Kashmir. I suggest that eco-cosmopolitism is a neo-imperialist hegemonic construct that glosses over both the lived experiences and the complicated history of Kashmir. Ideological visions of a global environmentalism are easy to imagine when one occupies the privilege of sanitary waste management and relative political stability; however, in contested territories of violence, one’s concern for the environment is guided less by planetary liberal-universalist environmentalism than by ownership of local land. Examining Munnu’s representation of Kashmir’s sanitation infrastructure, I argue that India wrestles against its own colonial history while also employing tenets of colonialism in the eco-colonization of Kashmir, which I pair with international apathy toward Kashmir. By analyzing British blueprints of colonial latrines for South Asia, drafted in 1906, I argue that Munnu confronts global indifference to the humanitarian crisis and the environmental degradation of Kashmir’s dated concerns and municipal infrastructure.

Keywords:

• Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir
• eco-cosmopolitism
• sanitation infrastructure
• environmental citizenship
• human rights

Acknowledgments

My sincere appreciation to Andrew Filler, Amanda Proctor, and the two anonymous peer-reviewers for their invaluable comments on this essay; to Dr. Esra Mirze Santesso who first introduced me to Munnu; to Dr. Pallavi Rastogi who read the first draft; to Ifat Gazia and Takbeer Salati for their conference feedback; to Dr. Nyla Ali Khan for editing this special issue; and most of all to Malik Sajad for creating beautiful works of art and permitting me to include a few in the final version.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the autho(s).

Notes

1 To view both reports see: (https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/Documents.aspx).

2 In late October 1947, a tribal invasion from Pakistan, or what Robert Wirsing (1994, 38–9) calls “the aggression issue,” provoked Maharaja Hari Singh to “appea[l] for military assistance from New Delhi,” who conditioned the accession of Kashmir to India. There remains heavy dispute about responsibility and the “official interpretation of the events” (39). New Delhi “carefully complied” a report, the White Paper on Jammu and Kashmir, that outlined “two fundamental themes … establishing India’s innocence… [and] Pakistan’s guilt” (39).

3 Patrick Hayden notes numerous initiatives (2010, 368–9).

4 Nyla Ali Khan (2011, 25) writes, “the inception of the militant separatist movement in J&K in 1989 scorched the landscape, particularly the headway… in providing women with educational and economic opportunities.”

5 (Figure 1) shows hair collection, Doron and Jeffery discuss this practice (107–19).

6 In “2013, an estimated 600,000 dry latrines were still cleaned each day by human hands” (Doron and Jeffery 201850, 32); in 2015, “2.3 million people” worked with unsanitary waste– Dalit’s are “born to it” (72). Dry latrines were banned in 1993 and 2013 (73).

7 Sudharak Olwe photographed “the untold story of Mumbai’s conservancy workers” (http://sudharakolwe.com/insearch.html).

8 “Modi was awarded… [a] 2019 Gates Foundation Goalkeeper award”–– the award received fierce protest (https://www.insider.com/bill-gates-toilet-award-goes-to-modi-despite-protests-2019-9); https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/the-violent-toll-of-hindu-nationalism-in-india).

9 To view the 2020 report, visit: (https://undocs.org/A/75/53).

10 Amit Rahul Baishya (2018) argues that the dogs serve “as a symbolic marker of difference,” yet the fact that “adults too are bound by similar corporeal needs shocks Munnu and makes him feel ashamed” (62).

11 Something could be said about Western technology consumerism, e-waste, and the impacts on the Global South (Sinha, Bharambe, and Nair  2008, 19–21).

12 An estimated “2.6 billion people lack access to basic sanitation… 40 out of every 100 people in the world do not have their own toilet. One child dies every 15 seconds due to lack of basic sanitation” (www.peepoople.com/we-are-all-peepoople/what-we-stand-for/).

13 By sheer necessity of length, I limited my paper to discuss the property claims of Kashmir, India, and Pakistan.

14 See (Kabir 2009, 50, 5)

15 (Sinha, Bharambe, and Nair 2008, 83) for an extensive list of municipal rulings.

16 PM Modi declared the Swachh Bharat Mission achieved 100% success; Video Volunteers found an alternative truth (https://www.videovolunteers.org/over-three-months-since-pm-declared-india-100-odf-our-fact-check-continues/).

17 On April 21, 1948, The United Nations’ “Resolution on the India-Pakistan Question” interceded in territorial disputes over Jammu Kashmir, an autonomous Kashmir was not considered (https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/578478; Sajad 2015b, 208).

18 Žižek’s “three different attitudes toward excremental excess” are, “[an] ambiguous contemplative fascination; [a] hasty attempt to get rid of the unpleasant excess as fast as possible; [and] the pragmatic approach to treat the excess as an ordinary object to be disposed of in an appropriate way” (1997, 5).

19 Understanding the limitations and possible discriminations that exists among multispecies models of the world, Neel Ahuja (2012) calls for “planetarity,” or a relationship that understands the complexity and “interplay of identity and difference” of species as they interweave with each other and thus form a “transpecies” (28–9).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zachary Vincent Bordas

Zachary Vincent Bordas is an English Ph.D. student at Louisiana State University. His publications include: “Constant Surveillance: Criticism of a ‘Disciplinary Society’ and the Paradox of Agency in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire” (Postcolonial Interventions 2019); and “Performative Subalternity and Positionality in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist” (Journal of Contemporary Poetics 2017). He recently secured a “Friends of Princeton” library grant and a spot to present his research on Kashmir at the 2022 Bavarian American Summer Academy (COVID pending).