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Paper short abstract

This paper presents Haryanvi women’s folksongs as econarratives that encode ecological ethics within cultural memory. Through Ram–Lakshman–Sita metaphors, these oral traditions link local ecology with global ecological citizenship, envisioning Earth as shared belonging beyond human-centered frames.

Paper long abstract

The climate crisis and the ecological precarity of our times is alarming and the situation demands new modes of belonging that move beyond narrow national and anthropocentric frames. Econarratives—stories, songs, and oral traditions that embed ecological wisdom—offer an important lens for reimagining identities- local and global, rooted in ecological interconnectedness. This paper argues that econarratives function as cultural memory practices which foreground Earth citizenship rather than fragmented or exclusionary affiliations. The oral traditions, particularly women’s folksongs from Haryana, operate as practices of cultural memory that foreground an ethic of care towards the world. Through seasonal invocations, elemental metaphors, and devotional refrains, such songs do not merely aestheticize nature but position rivers, land, trees, and deities as co-actors in sustaining life. Focusing on the "Ram aur Lakshman" folksong from Haryana’s oral repertoire, the study explores how epic memory and vernacular ecology converge in women’s singing traditions. The song, recounts the thirst of Ram and Lakshman in exile, and its resolution through the nurturing presence of Sita and the replenishing cycles of water, illustrates how local narrative traditions encode ecological ethics and kinship structures that resist extractivist worldviews. By situating these econarratives in dialogue with global discourses of ecological citizenship, the paper demonstrates how local voices contribute to the negotiation of planetary belonging. The convergence of the local and the global in such songs underscores the capacity of folklore to both preserve cultural continuity and articulate cosmopolitan identities that affirm human embeddedness within a larger ecological continuum.