Mediating Resilience through Folk Ecology: To Poydom as a Rabha Drama

Abstract

This paper centres around the intersection of folk ecology and community resilience in To Poydom, a theatre production of Badungduppa Kalakendra, a Rabha theatre group in Goalpara, Assam. It primarily argues that the ecological narrative and setting of a folktale may be posed as instrumental in mediating peace, resilience, and environmental sustainability in the contemporary context of ecoprecarity, exactly what this Rabha play does in the contexts of political unrest and ecological intolerance in the Rabha tribal village of Rampur. The indigenous cosmovision of the Rabha tribe, a marginalised tribal community of the Indo-Mongoloid origin, is manifested in rituals and customs that centre around Sal forest which provides the community with ecological and spiritual sustenance. This Animist cosmovision is embodied in the worship of forestdeities, often accompanied by prayers, traditional offerings, and ritual performances directed towards various purposes — in all of which the forest plays an integral role. However, the forest ecosystem has been threatened by massive deforestation that followed the infrastructure developments and rubber plantation in colonial and post-Independence India, in which desacralisation of the forest has been a policy. As a result, the more-than-human inhabitants and the ecological-spiritual lifeways of the community were endangered. In turn, the Rabha people have strived to protect them by including the forest ecology in the text and context of their performance by foregrounding their tribal myths, folk narratives, and indigenous lifeways. To Poydom is one of Badungduppa’s most defining productions, incorporating a simple Rabha folktale of a mother bird teaching her children to remain united against all forms of external oppression, extending it to dramatise resilience, care, and environmental sustainability amidst the insurgency movements and ecological devastations in their tribal community in Assam.