Singing the Self and the Soil: Ecological Thought in Baul Folk Narratives

Abstract

The Baul tradition of Bengal is generally approached through the categories of mysticism, humanism, anti-caste thought, religious syncretism, and spiritual liberation. Yet Baul songs also contain a significant ecological imagination in which the human body, soil, plants, animals, rivers, rain, and the wider natural world are understood as interconnected forms of existence. This paper examines ecological thought in Baul folk narratives through the concepts of prakṛti, deha-tattva, ecocentrism, interdependence, and vernacular environmentalism. Drawing on some unheard ecological songs associated with Baul Taskir Ali and Baul Vijay Sarkar, alongside Lalon and other Baul traditions, the paper argues that Baul ecological consciousness is not simply a modern environmental interpretation imposed upon an older folk tradition. Taskir Ali's songs, particularly “Nature is the Center” and “I in the Forest,” explicitly establish nature as teacher, mother, and spiritual guide, while Vijay Sarkar's song about ‘leaving the earth’ articulates an early vernacular ethics of intergenerational sustainability. The paper further considers the contemporary performance of Barṣhā Maṅgal Utsav, and ecological activities at Shyam Sakha Ashram in Birbhum as examples of how Baul ecological philosophy moves from song into embodied cultural practice. Through an ecocritical reading, the study demonstrates that Baul folk narratives offer an alternative to anthropocentric modernity by imagining the self not as separate from the environment but as a part of an interconnected ecological body.