‘My World Is a Different World’: Caste and Dalit Eco-Literary Traditions

Abstract

India ‘nature writing’ has traditionally encompassed ecology, geography and sacrality, and has often missed Dalit literary traditions. In the last few decades, environment literature has expanded its horizons to consider intersections between ecology, society and culture. However, the question still remains: why is there no recognition of ecological underpinnings in the writings of subordinate castes by the wider canon of the environmental literary sphere? This article addresses this exclusion and explores the relationship between caste, nature, Dalits and environmental imagination. It takes Dalit autobiographies from different regions and languages to highlight an unexplored aspect of Dalit writings, thus widening the scope and perspective of environment literature and providing a distinct perspective from the margins. Through the lens of eco-literature, eco-criticism and eco-justice, the article underlines how nature’s beauty and caste burden, space and identity, land and bondage, social injustice and environmental ‘othering’ are significant features of these life narratives. It weaves certain select themes like nature’s beauty, caste exploitation, labour and animals to explore the pain and stigmatisation, along with a vibrancy and dynamism, in Dalit eco-narrations of the self.