A Story of Belonging and Eco-cosmopolitanism: Mamang Dai’s The Legends of Pensam

Abstract

A cosmopolitan existence in harmony with nature, a cosmopolitan green existence, is the need of the hour. It is important to prevent the world from moving towards an apocalyptic future, where extinction of species including humans would not only be a possibility but a reality. This cosmopolitan green existence is expected to be an egalitarian ideal that can accommodate all species on the planet - human and non-human - without being involved in ‘othering’. It should move beyond the binaries which remain rigid despite the deconstruction of the binaries in the contemporary post-structural world. The theory of eco-cosmopolitanism which advocates an egalitarian, cosmopolitan and ecological ideal of existence, also attempts to redefine the notion of belonging beyond the current anthropocentric definitions of man and nature. This paper explores how certain spaces which are marginalised and put on the threshold of liminality turn out to be real spaces of all-encompassing eco-cosmopolitanism. The paper through the analysis of Mamang Dai’s portrayal of the Adis tribe of Arunachal Pradesh, in The Legends of Pensam, delineates how one can belong to an eco-cosmopolitan world.