Ecocritical Reflections in the Poetry of Mamang Dai and Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih: A Comparative Study

Abstract

This paper offers an ecocritical comparative reading of Mamang Dai (Arunachal Pradesh) and Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih (Meghalaya), two major poetic voices from North-East India whose writing is shaped by riverine landscapes, biodiversity, and tribal cultural memory. Using ecocriticism as the primary framework, the study examines how their poems represent nature not as passive scenery but as a living presence that carries agency, history, and ethical meaning. Dai’s river imagery, especially in poems such as ‘The River’ and ‘An Obscure Place,’ figures water as sacred continuity, linking community life with ancestral memory and spiritual renewal.

The river becomes both nurturer and warning, capable of creation and destruction, and thus resists human claims to mastery. Nongkynrih’s treatment of the river, notably in ‘The Discovery,’ is more overtly critical and socio-political: the river records social transformation, modern anxieties, and the pollution produced by human intervention. Together, the poets expose how modernization and greed destabilize ecological balance while eroding indigenous values of reciprocity with the earth. The paper argues that their poetry functions as ecological witnessing and cultural resistance, revitalizing local knowledge systems to advocate sustainable coexistence. By foregrounding local ecologies and indigenous ethics, their poetry widens Indian English environmental discourse and invites readers toward sustainable coexistence. It concludes that regional poetry can broaden environmental consciousness by restoring moral attention to place and water.