Culture, Creativity and Blue Humanities in the works of Mamang Dai

Abstract

The present paper focuses the interrelationship between Culture, Creativity and the newly emerging interdisciplinary field Blue Humanities in the works of Mamang Dai. As Dai belongs from Arunachal Pradesh, she focuses on Adi traditions, oral narratives and ecological ethics in her poetry and prose. Through a close reading of her poetry and prose, the study highlights how rivers, landscape and oral traditions functions not merely as settings but as living divines that shape identity, memory and community life. Blue humanities-a water centered branch, in Dai’s work, water bodies are not merely natural setting but as living divine that shapes identity, sustains cultural continuity. Her works emphasize that land, mountain, rivers; forests are not separate from human beings. Mamang Dai’s writings ultimately propose an alternative worldview- one grounded in ecological responsibility and cultural continuity.The study further argues that Dai’s engagement with nature is deeply rooted in indigenous cosmology, where land and water are inseparable from human existence. By analyzing themes of ecological balance, cultural continuity and environmental sensitivity, this paper reveals how Dai’s work contributes to contemporary discussion on sustainability and cultural preservation. Finally, it holds Dai as a key literary figure whose creativity bridges the gap between traditional ecological understanding and modern environmental thought, with enriching blue humanities in the Indian context.