Postcolonial Environment and Ecofeminist Resistance: Reading Mamang Dai’s River Poems Km. Nishtha1 & Prof. Rani Tiwari2

Abstract

Mamang Dai’s poetry emerges from the ecological, cultural, and political landscapes of Arunachal Pradesh, a region marked by biodiversity as well as postcolonial marginalisation. While Dai’s poems are deeply rooted in images of rivers, mountains, forests, and rain, they do not function merely as lyric celebrations of nature. Instead, they engage critically with questions of ecological loss, indigenous identity, political violence, and gendered forms of domination. This paper examines three poems from Dai’s River Poems—“Small Towns and the River,” “An Obscure Place,” and “The Voice of the Mountain”—through the combined frameworks of postcolonial ecocriticism and ecofeminism. The paper argues that Dai reimagines nature as an animate, speaking presence that resists colonial, capitalist, and patriarchal modes of control. Through close readings, the paper demonstrates how rivers and mountains become repositories of memory, witnesses to violence, and symbols of female resilience. Ultimately, Dai’s poetry articulates an ecological ethic that links environmental justice with cultural survival and women’s agency in postcolonial India.

Keywords: Postcolonial ecology, ecofeminism, Mamang Dai, North-East poetry, nature and gender