The Ecopolitical Spirituality of Miya Poetry

Resistance Against Environmental Racism of the Majoritarian State in Assam, India

Bibliographic Data

ID3528285
AuthorsBhargabi Das (0000-0003-4932-7832, Shiv Nadar University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume16
Issue4
Pages437
Publication date2025-03-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel16040437
OpenAlexW4408928563
LanguageEN
References cited30

Emerging from the Bengali Muslim char-dwellers in the riverine environments of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries, the Miya Poetry movement is a unique environmentalism of the marginalized in contemporary Assam, India. Writing as a native scholar of Assam, I look at how the poetry movement displays the ethos of an ecopolitical spirituality that embodies the riverine ecology, environmental politics, and sacrality and how it challenges the majoritarian state's narrative of the Bengali Muslim char-dwellers being denigrated as the "environmental waste producers". My concept of "ecopolitical spirituality" is in tandem with Carol White's 'African American religious naturalism', which elucidates the remembrance and evocation of traditional environmental relationships of and by the marginalized communities with the purpose of healing and rehumanizing themselves. I begin with a short history of the Miya Poetry movement among the Bengali Muslim char-dwellers in Assam. It narrates how the leading Miya poets adopt the local "Miya" dialect to express the traditional and continued relationships of Bengali Muslim char-dwellers who find themselves entangled with and nurtured by the land, rivers, plants, and animals. I then examine how Bengali Muslims have been framed by the majoritarian state and Assamese society as "environmental waste producers". With climate change-induced destructive floods, along with post-colonial state's rampant building of embankments leading to violent floods and erosion, Bengali Muslim char-dwellers are forced to migrate to nearby government grazing reserves or national parks. There, the majoritarian state projects them to be damaging the environment and issues violent evictions. In state reports too, the Bengali Muslim char-dwellers have been equated with "rats", "crows", and "vultures". I use the concept of "environmental racism" to show how this state-led denigration justifies the allegation of the Muslim char-dwellers as "environmental waste producers" and how the Miya Poetry movement counters the racist allegation with new metaphors by highlighting the traditional relationships of the marginalized community with the riverine environment. In the final section, I look in detail at the characteristics and reasons that make the poetry movement ecopolitically spiritual in nature. I thus lay out an argument that the ecopolitical spirituality of the Miya Poetry movement resists the statist dehumanization and devaluation of Miya Muslims by not mocking, violating, or degrading the majoritarian Assamese but by rehumanizing themselves and their relationship with the environment

Art · Biology · Literature · Poetry · Political science · Racism · Sociology · Spirituality · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Gender Studies · Indian History and Philosophy · Mathematics · Medicine · Philosophy · Religious studies · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Ecology

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