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Abstract
Subash Limbu’s recent science fiction film Ningwasum (2022) interrogates the contours of memory and futurity in relation to pressing concerns of climate change and indigenous rights. The experimental mode of the film provides a platform to question the linearity of time and its association with a teleological model of history that leads to a seemingly inevitable future. What happens, the film asks, when different ways of imagining the future lead to alternative trajectories. In this paper, I am interested in how the film responds to some of the foundational principles of colonial law and governance. For example, I examine how using the Limbu language in the film challenges Thomas Macaulay’s claims in his “Minute on Indian Education” that the English language is uniquely capable of conveying ideas of science and modernity. At the same time, I also consider the film’s representation of the Adivasi (first people) Yakthung community and its relationship to the postcolonial state. Drawing on theories of Afrofuturism that Limbu identifies as providing inspiration for the film, I frame the film’s political, artistic, and legal interventions within a global movement to interrupt predictable futurities.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Bose, who was educated in India and England, made significant advancements in physics, botany, and biology, and was the founder of the prestigious Bose Institute.
2 Bose, Jagadish C., and Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay. ““Runaway Cyclone”.” Strange Horizons. September 30, 2013. http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/runaway-cyclone/.
3 Interestingly, Ray Bradbury explored the butterfly effect in relation to time travel in his short story “A Sound of Thunder” (1955).
4 Macaulay, Thomas Babington. Speeches by Lord Macaulay: With His Minute on Indian Education. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1935.
5 Ibid.
6 Geddes, Patrick. The Life and Work of Sir Jagadis C. Bose. London: Longmans, 1920. 228.
7 Yakthung is the endonym of the people, who also known as Limbu.
8 Limbu, Subash T. Ningwasum, 2022.
9 Ibid. 3:40-5:06.
10 Ibid. 3:00-3:15.
11 Ibid. 14:00.
13 Chakraborty, Ritodhi, and Pasang Yangjee Sherpa. “From Climate Adaptation to Climate Justice: Critical Reflections on the IPCC and Himalayan Climate Knowledges.” Climatic change 167, no. 3-4 (2021): 49–49. 4.
14 Ibid. 5.
15 Ibid. 10.
16 Ibid. 11.
17 The limitations of western science as a methodology for understanding the natural environment has been a prominent theme in ecocriticism.
18 Ningwasum. 20:23.
19 Ibid. 3:02.
20 Ibid. 21:09.
21 Whyte, Kyle. “Indigenous Climate Change Studies: Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene.” English language notes 55, no. 1-2 (2017): 153–162.
22 Ibid. 229.
23 Ibid.
24 Howard Sandoval, Christine, and Jessica L. Horton. “‘Genocide Is Climate Change’: a Conversation About Colonized California and Indigenous Futurism.” World art (Abingdon, U.K.) ahead-of-print, no. ahead-of-print (2023): 1–20. 15.
25 Ibid.
26 Ningwasum. 11:00.
27 Ibid. 11:14-11:18.
28 Ibid. 11:36.
29 Ibid. 11:55-12:10.
30 Ibid. 16:23-16:55.
31 Ningwasum. 32:16.
32 Ibid. 24:36.
33 Ibid. 29:28.
34 Ibid. 40:19- 40:42.
35 Ibid. 17:37.
36 Ibid. 22:12.
37 Ibid. 22:02.
38 Ibid. 22:30.
39 For a discussion of the Eurocentric bias of Antropocene discourse see Mathur N (2015) “It’s a conspiracy theory and climate change” of beastly encounters and cervine dissapearances.
in Himalayan India. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5(1):87–111.
40 Whyte, Kyle. “Indigenous Climate Change Studies: Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene.” English language notes 55, no. 1-2 (2017): 153–162. 160.
41 Ningwasum. 17:20.
42 Lucy Rowland, “Indigenous temporality and climate change in Alexis Wright’s Carpenteria” 542.
43 Chakraborty and Sherpa, 10.
44 Andrews, Tarren. “Indigenous Futures and Medieval Pasts.” English language notes 58, no. 2 (2020): 1–17. 12.
45 Ibid. 10.
46 Nelson, Alondra. “AfroFuturism: Past-Future Visions.” Colorlines (Oakland, Calif.) 3, no. 1 (2000): 34–37. 37.
47 Nelson, Alondra. “Introduction: Future Texts.” Social text 20, no. 2 (2002): 1–15. 9.
48 Ibid. 2.
49 Zamalin, Alex. “Afrofuturism as Reconstitution.” Critical Analysis of Law. Vol 9 no. 1 (2022): 8-15. 8.
50 Ibid. 9.
51 Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia : the Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press, 2009. 28.
52 Ibid. 27-28.
53 Ibid. 26.
54 Austin, J. L. How to do things with words. 2d ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975.
55 Here I am mindful of Tarren Andrews’s reminder, citing Eve Tuck and Wayne Wang, that “decolonization is not a metaphor.” Appropriating the idea of decolonization outside of its material context, to apply to things like “decolonizing” schools, methods, or areas of study, converts decolonization into a metaphor rather than a material practice. “The primary concern here,” Andrews notes, “is that metaphors of decolonization allow for ongoing settler moves to innocence and create space for settlers to “play Indian,” a term they borrow from Philip Deloria’s (Standing Rock Sioux) 1998 book Playing Indian.” Converting decolonization into a metaphor allows for a corresponding conversion of appropriation into allyship. “The act of playing Indian” Andrews explains, “is (often unintentionally, I think) achieved when Indigenous thought and theory is employed as a lens without recognition of and attention to the epistemic conditions from which Indigenous knowledges are developed” (12). My intention here is not to think of decolonization as a metaphor, but rather, to explore what other forms of metaphoricity underlie our attempts to theorize decolonization.
56 Woods, Kerri. “Environmental Human Rights.” in Holifield, Ryan, Jayajit Chakraborty, and Gordon P. Walker. The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Justice. London: Routledge, 2018. 149-150.
57 Another question that arises is, if human rights are universal, how might they be claimed and enforced? Within dominant legal frameworks worldwide, in both local and global contexts, human rights are conceptually understood as universal, though they are practically adjudicated as rights of citizenship, enforced primarily through specific government entities. Transnational courts such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights can sometimes also provide legal remedies (150).
58 Woods, 158.
59 Ningwasum, 17:59.
60 Elliot, Robert. “The Rights of Future People.” Journal of applied philosophy 6, no. 2 (1989): 159–170. 159.
61 Ibid.
62 See, for example, Parfit, Derek. “Future People, the Non-Identity Problem, and Person-Affecting Principles.” Philosophy & public affairs 45, no. 2 (2017): 118–157.
63 Griffith, Aaron M. “The Rights of Future Persons and the Ontology of Time.” Journal of social philosophy 48, no. 1 (2017): 58–70. 58.
64 Woods, 155.
65 Ibid. 156.
66 Ibid. 152.
67 For a detailed discussion of the Act, see Collins, Toni, and Shea Esterling. “Fluid Personality: Indigenous Rights and the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017 in Aotearoa New Zealand.” Melbourne journal of international law 20, no. 1 (2019): 1–24.
68 Two related cases in the High Court of the northeastern Indian state of Uttarakhand (Mohd Salim v. State of Uttarakhand and Lalit Miglani v. State of Uttarakhand) also sought to bestow legal personhood on the Ganges and Yamuna rivers and their Himalayan glacial sources. Legal scholarship on the cases has been both laudatory for their innovative approach to environmental justice and critical, especially for their reliance on Hindutva logic in order to advocate for the rights of ancient rivers. While the cases add an important dimension to the pursuit of riverine rights and environmental justice, their turn to the mythic past does not ultimately offer a way out of the developmental teleology in which the judgments ostensibly seek to intervene. For a detailed discussion of the cases see O’Donnell, Erin L. “At the Intersection of the Sacred and the Legal: Rights for Nature in Uttarakhand, India.” Journal of environmental law 30, no. 1 (2018): 135–144. 141, and Jolly, Stellina, and K.S. Roshan Menon. “Of Ebbs and Flows: Understanding the Legal Consequences of Granting Personhood to Natural Entities in India.” Transnational environmental law 10, no. 3 (2021): 467–492.
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Leila Neti
Leila Neti is the Irma and Jay Price Professor of English at Occidental College. She specializes in Victorian literature, contemporary Anglophone literature, and law and literature. Her recent book Colonial Law in India and the Victorian Imagination (Cambridge UP, 2021) explores the shared cultural logic of both legal opinions and novels during the Victorian era. Her published articles have appeared in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Law and Literature, and in various edited collections.