The present paper is based on Kalahandi region in the eastern state of Odisha in India. Almost half of the populations of the region belongs to the Indigenous tribals and dalits communities. The region has been termed as backward and underdeveloped and infamous for its poor Human Development Indicators. The developmental Indian state has been very much active since last three decades to address the issues of backwardness and underdevelopment and claims that it is trying to bring the region to the mainstream.
Under this backdrop, this paper tries to situate the Indigenous worldviews and knowledge practices in the larger globalised framework. With the help of the Toki-Parab festival as an entry point, which is celebrated among the marginalised local Indigenous communities particularly Paraja and Kandha of the region for good harvest and overall well-being of the people; it tries to examine the worldviews, knowledge and practices of these communities in relations to nature. With the help of oral narratives, interviews, folktales and participant observation of various ritual practices, festivities; this paper tries to explore the journey of the festival to understand the philosophical roots and its eco-cosmological perspectives of the region and the populations. The festival and the region have undergone transformations in its interactions with the Indian State, Brahminical social order and neoliberal market. Keeping in mind the above context, this paper seeks to ask some pertinent issues: How to understand the relationship between human beings and nature with the help eco-cosmology, as an approach at the ethnographic present keeping in mind the global diversity and sustenance? Can we move beyond the binary of tradition vs modern and imagine a better world with the help of the perspective of eco-cosmology rescuing it from the dominant neoliberal social order.
