"Lok Sahitya and Social Critique: A Literary-Analytical Study of the Thakor Community"

Abstract

The folk literature of the Thakor community in Gadhvada offers a distinctive cultural lens through which rural life, ecological uncertainty, and social values are continuously interpreted and re-interpreted. Rather than functioning as static remnants of tradition, these songs operate as living commentaries that reveal how a community negotiates its environment, responsibilities, and emotional worlds. Through rain-invocation verses, fertility prayers, honour couplets, agrarian chants, and heroic chhand, the oral tradition captures a texture of life shaped by drought, monsoon rhythms, kinship duties, and caste-coded ideals. The present study examines this corpus as an interwoven system of ecological knowledge, ethical guidance, and collective memory, showing how ordinary rural experiences become carriers of philosophical reflection. The songs articulate anxieties about scarcity, affirm the dignity of labour, uphold expectations of lineage and honour, and preserve the emotional registers through which people have historically encountered uncertainty. In tracing these expressive forms, the paper demonstrates that Thakor lok-sahitya is not merely folklore; it is a dynamic cultural intelligence—one that continues to influence identity, moral reasoning, and social coherence under the fragile skies of Gadhvada.