From Scroll to School: Reviving Eco Consciousness in Patachitra’s Oral Tradition for Climate Studies

Abstract

Patachitra is a centuries-old folk-art form of Bengal and Odisha, that integrates visual art painted on the scroll or pata with the narrative sung by the patuas or scroll painters. The patuas or chitrakars, the practitioners of this oral tradition, are basically the itinerants who travel from village to village unfolding the scrolls and singing the patua gaan or song based on scroll painting that is essentially embedded in mythology, local historical events, socio-cultural concerns or activities related to local geographical landscape. A distinctive feature of Patachitra is its seamless merging of environmentally rooted knowledge with oral story telling practices. As an eco-oral tradition of Bengal, it represents a rich reservoir of indigenous ecological knowledge, cultural memory and sustainable practices that has the potential to create environmental awareness and shape climate futures. Using an interdisciplinary framework, combining Eco-oral studies with indigenous knowledge system, this study attempts to explore the ecological concerns embedded in various scrolls thereby establishing Patachitra as an environmental memory archive that preserves ecological wisdom and ethics. The study also aims at identifying numerous ways in which Patachitra as a community reservoir of indigenous ecological knowledge contributes in creating climate futures. Thereby, the study seeks in suggesting policy formulating that will aid in canonizing the community’s ecological wisdom trapped in the visual and oral format towards developing future climate studies.