Nature-Culture Dialectics: Folk Literature of J&K in an Eco-critical Frame

Man in his blind race to gain superiority over nature, has pushed mankind into such a situation where apocalypse seems to be the only end. The planet Earth has been created beautifully balanced to cater to the needs of all the species living on it. Man intervened and interfered with its process and disturbed the life cycles of all the living and non-living components of this Earth. The major reason of this attenuating attitude seems to be his distancing from the traditional wisdom that he got from the folk sources. Folk literature has always talked of this balance between all forms of life. It has always raised human consciousness of those societies which believed in this form of knowledge. Raising consciousness of the folk has been an amazing style of folk literature. Today, in the twenty first century, when the selfishly sown seeds have fully grown into a shadeless and fruitless tree, literature is being looked at as a solution to teach and preach. Folklores are being revisited and re-studied for solace. This paper proposes to study the folklore of J&K in the eco-critical framework. The texts taken include varieties of folklore in translation to reach a conclusion; proverbs, songs & folk tales.