Origins and Evolution of Ecocriticism: Anyalytical Study

Abstract

While Western academia embraced ecocriticism in the late 20th century, Urdu literary circles only began engaging with ecological perspectives in the 2010s. This nascent discipline has since flourished, with universities incorporating ecocritical studies, scholars translating Western theories, and researchers producing original Urdu works on environmental literature. Notable contributions include Aurangzaib Naizi's pioneering books Ecocriticism: Theory and Practice and Urdu Literature: An Ecological Perspective, which established foundational frameworks. Pakistani scholars like Abdullah Naem Rasool (Urdu Poetry: An Ecological Review) and Dr. Ashraf Javed Malik (Urdu Nazm: An Ecological Perspective) have expanded the discourse through genre-specific analyses. From India, Nasreen Ahsan Fatihi's Ecofeminism and Contemporary Urdu Short Story offers a gender-sensitive approach, while Sabeen Ali's journal Deedban provides a platform for ongoing ecocritical debates. This rapid institutionalization reflects Urdu academia's responsiveness to global ecological concerns while developing indigenous critical paradigms. The discipline's growth demonstrates how Urdu scholarship is both absorbing international theoretical models and cultivating its own ecocritical traditions to reinterpret literary heritage through an environmental lens. As climate change urgency grows, Urdu ecocriticism promises to yield increasingly sophisticated analyses of nature-culture intersections in South Asian literature