TOWARDS RESILIENT FUTURE: BIOCULTURAL DIVERSITY IN THE SELECTED INDO-CARIBBEAN FICTION.

A journey of biocultural diversity begins with monocultural mindset and it moves slowly towards intercultural interaction. Biocultural diversity with thousands of human cultures and languages lead us to fertile interaction among the people from all races, classes, creeds and ethnicities. There are several worlds, visible and invisible, inside and outside us. Our entire life is a struggle for fitting into those worlds. A lively society always accepts change and her citizens try to adapt themselves in the changing environment. Diversity, equality and democracy are common goals of all nations who have emerged as transnational, cross cultural and multicultural entities in the twenty first century. The modern societies are trying to increase intercultural competence and then adapt multicultural competence. If we share and learn to respect our differences the world will be a better place to live in. Preserving our indigenous culture and adapting new global multicultural phenomenon is a huge challenge especially to the marginalized sections of all societies. These people struggle to come into the main stream and then to adapt the culture of the dominant. The Caribbean today are the former slaves and indentured labourers from almost all continents of the world who strive to stick up to their roots and to practice emerging multicultural way of living. The similar case is with the Indian Dalits, who are the low caste people in India. They are desperate to come into mainstream but do not want to lose their cultural heritage. The present paper deals with two authors with Indian origin but with different social ethos. It investigates the Caribbean mindset through V. S. Naipaul's The Mimic Men (1963) and the Dalit mindset of the Indians by Baby Kamble's The Prison We Broke (2008). The paper will be divided into four parts. The origin of the Caribbean and the Dalits in brief, the identity issues, their encounters with foreign cultures and finally development of multicultural competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]