3 - Culture: ‘God of Humans’ – Dina–Bhadri, Dalit Folk Tales, and Environmental Movements

Summary

Dalits’ histories, myths, and memories offer invaluable insights into their ecological past and present. These narratives, which have been widely disseminated through oral tradition, print media, and various forms of communication hold immense popularity within marginalized communities. Embedded within these stories, songs, myths, and performances are depictions of nature, landscapes, struggles for natural resources, acts of sacrifice, labour, and pain. Often characterized by their collective and anonymous nature, they have assumed significant relevance in the Dalit community's ongoing struggles for land, water, and other resource rights. A counterpoint to hegemony, such cultural forms represent dissident voices, reflecting Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of dialogics and heteroglossia, and Stuart Hall's concept of ‘oppositional’ decoding, challenging ‘negotiated’ reading positions. It may be equated with Raymond Williams's paradigm of ‘dominant’, ‘residual’, and ‘emergent’ cultural practices in constant interaction.

In the Indo-Gangetic Plains of India and Nepal, folk tales, stories, and songs woven around the two Musahar brothers, Dina and Bhadri, thrive among the Dalits, particularly those belonging to that community. Dalits living in the bordering sub-regions of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and Nepali Terai have used myriad voices and a diverse set of folk traditions and cultures – oral tales, stories, songs, music, ballads, performances, proverbs, riddles, theatre, dance, festivals, crafts, and idols – to celebrate their folk heroes. The Dina–Bhadri folklore is a frequently sung ballad in north Bihar, with performances of as many as fifty-two wars of the heroes, waged to protect the poor labourers from exploitation by the rich landlords. The folk tale has helped in transforming the rich cultural capital of Musahars into ‘political and developmental capital for the betterment of the community as a whole’. The legend of Dina–Bhadri is also effective for the mobilization of the marginalized Musahar community ‘because of its strong anti-feudal, anti-bondage, and pro-peasant characteristics’.

A study of the influential figures of Dina–Bhadri can signify a confluence of streams and issues – a popular folk tale and its dynamic reproduction in a variety of forms; changing histories of past and present; entanglements of texts, traditions, and performances; everyday lived social experiences of Musahars while producing and reproducing these stories; and a Dalit politics of folklore. While the folk tale has been a subject of some scholarly works, in contemporary times, it has also acquired dynamic ecological meanings, which have been relatively understudied.