The Making of a National Festival: Bihu in Colonial and Postcolonial Assam

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THE MAKING OF A NATIONAL FESTIVAL: BIHU IN COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL ASSAM

Thesis submitted for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Arts at Jadavpur University, Kolkata

BY

ANKUR TAMULI PHUKAN

Jadavpur University Kolkata, India 2018

Contents

Acknowledgements

i

Introduction Historicizing Bihu Reviewing the Literature Questions of Method Overview of Chapters

1 5 9 14

Chapter One Scenes of the Obscene: The Lewd, the Rustic and Bihu Elopements and Abductions Nationalist Predicaments Gaoliya: The Vulgar and the Authentic Rurality Reconceptualized

21 21 39 53 64

Chapter Two Nationalization of Affect: Bhaona, Bihu and Linguistic Nationalism Bhava in a Polyglot World Literarization of Bihu: Assamese Bhava, Assamese Prema

72 73 88 102

Chapter Three Organizing Celebrations: Labour, Leisure and Other Demands of Nationalism Body Politics New Festivals A New Bihu

118 118 128 141

Chapter Four Inventing Conflicting Traditions: Bihu and the Early Postcolonial Romances The Voice of the Nation-State The Kamrupi Music School Agriculture, Labour and the Left Nationalist Moment of Bihu

152 154 166 184

Chapter Five Powers of Spectacularity: Bihu in the Times of Insurgency and After Spectacularity and Disciplinarity: The Assam Movement and Bihu Donation, Hindi Imperialism and Bihu: The ULFA Years The Novelized Ethnography The ‘Tribal’ Bihu Bihu on the Screen

192 193 211 218 223 236

Conclusion

247

Glossary Bibliography

255 256

Acknowledgements

I want to begin by thanking all those individuals who cast different kinds of doubts on my intent and purpose in pursuing a study on the politics of Bihu and that too in Calcutta! I thank them because those anxious concerns helped me think through the relationship between Bihu and the Assamese nation. I am grateful to the Indian Council of Historical Research for awarding me the Junior Research Fellowship for two years (2013-2015). This grant immensely helped me in collecting materials from different areas of Assam. The Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change and Development, Guwahati and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Guwahati helped me by providing short-term work at crucial points of time which enabled me to survive and concentrate on my work. I take this opportunity to thank OKD’s energetic director Professor Bhupen Sharma and the coordinator of the course Dr. Rajdeep Singha, for their encouragement and kind considerations. In OKD, Kalyan Das and Joydeep Baruah were very helpful and supportive. I will always be grateful to OKD’s library assistant Sharma-da for his love and affection. My one-and-a-half-year stint in the North Eastern Social Research Centre, Guwahati as a Research Associate in 2009-10 was very useful. Many concerns of this thesis actually emerged out of those productive days. My frequent visits to different north eastern states made me aware of the different shades and complexities of academic politics. I am thankful to its former director, Walter Fernandes for his generosity, commitment and support for young scholars like me. I also thank Dr. Alphonsus D’Souza, Dr Melvil Pereira and Dr Gita Bharali for continuing to help and encourage me in many ways. Thank You, NESRC! My interest in history was developed through discussions with the late Professor Amalendu Guha and Professor Hiren Gohain. From my university days both were very generous to me. Much of this thesis developed through those long, illuminating discussions and by reading their works. Guha Sir, I will always remember you with immense gratitude! I would also like to thank Anima baidew and Rani baidew for their love, hospitability and encouragements. I thank my teacher and supervisor Dr Bodhisattva Kar for his valuable insights on the archive of the Assam proper and the frontier areas, for constantly alerting me to recognize what is at stake, and for relentlessly pushing me forward. His generosity and patience will always be remembered.

Acknowledgments

Professor Sanjib Baruah has been very generous. I thank him for the long discussions, the wonderful food and drinks, and the useful “strategy sessions.” I am indebted to the late Professor Kesabananda Devagowsami for his warmth and support; despite his health issues, he helped me learning how to read old Assamese manuscripts. A long discussion with him about bhaona actually helped me to find my feet in the Vaishnavite literature. He will always be fondly remembered. Professor Nagen Saikia, Professor Rajen Saikia and Dr. Dhurbajyoti Bora were warm and helpful at all times, generously suffering my frequent evening calls. Professor Sajal Nag remains an inspiration. Xonzoi Barbora (Xonzoi-da) has been very kind to me in all these years and I hope that he always will be. For me, his many counselling sessions in the many different depressive moments of my life would remain as the textbook examples of magnanimity and humility. Dolly Kikon (Dolly-Ba), my sister from the Naga Hills, is still a signpost for me, even when she has taken up a teaching assignment in distant Melbourne. Except for some moments of anxious queries, my parents have been surprisingly considerate throughout the years of research and writing. They patiently waited for me to finish and sometimes had even encouraging words to say. Thank you! I would also like to thank my brother Ritoparna and my sister Samprity for their many kind considerations. My friends, brothers/sisters in arms – Prasun Barman, Sarat Phukan, Suryasikha Pathak, Akhil Gogoi, Geetashree Tamuli, Uttam Bathari, Chandan Kumar Sharma, Jaydeep Baruah, Santanu Borthakur and many more – were very helpful and generous in providing for both financial and “cultural” needs. In the last couple of years, my friend Gaurav and Meenal have been with me in every project. I somehow dragged them to everything I was doing. From my overnight stays in their modest homes to the long hours of discussion in the middle of the night, they received all my irritating behaviours with amazingly considerable patience. Their help in the editing and proofreading of this dissertation has been huge. I will forever remain grateful to them. Amrita Pritam Gogoi helped and inspired me in many different ways. During the first couple of years of this project, she also took part in my many material-hunting adventures. Those cherish memories will remain with me. My friends and comrades Bidyut Sagar Baruah, Uddipan Dutta, Nayanjyoti, Mayur Chetia, Utpal Phukan, Tanmoy Sharma, Arunav Saikia, Anshuman Gogoi, Himaloy Bora, Sahjahan, Bhasko, Bedanta, Bittu, Mahesh, Prafulla, Ayan and Panna have always remained my major pillars of strength. Suparna Sengupta, for a brief period of time, inspired me in many inexplicable ways. It was a good time with books, songs and stimulating conversations. Lachit Bordoloi, Dilip Patgiri, Nirod Gohain and Sudhkshana Gogoi were very helpful in locating and collecting some of the rare books from the 1980s and the 1990s. Lachitii

Acknowledgments

da and Dilip-da helped me read between the lines. My extensive discussions with Anup Chetia and Sunil Nath particularly helped me to reexamine many commonsensical discourses of the 1990s. Rajen Kalita and Arupa Patangia Kalita have always been beside me. Their commitment as well as insights on the social history of Assam have helped me think critically. My stint in the Centre was very pleasant and useful. Along with other members of the faculty, I would like to particularly remember Professor Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Dr Prachi Despande, Dr Priya Sangameswaran, Professor Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Professor Lakshmi Subramanian, Dr Dwaipayan Bhattachrya and Professor Rosinka Chaudhuri for their warmth, encouragement and insightful comments on the project. My sincere thanks to Kavita-di, our PhD Programme Assistant, for helping me in many ways. My Calcutta friends made my stints in that city lovely. I particularly miss our PhD group meetings in Bodhi-da’s house. I thank Debarati, Rito-da, Iman, Rupsa, Priyankur, Swati, Shubhasree, Sanjna and Anwesha for the noisy and lively discussions, for their camaraderie and insightful comments on my project. I would also like to thank Ammel, Mrunnal and all my other friends in the Centre. My classmate Swati has been very generous to me. In fact, in the last couple of months, she has taken great pains with resolving all the technical difficulties of the submission process on my behalf, while constantly running between her own school, the Centre and Jadavpur University. My friend Amit Rahul Baishya has been a constant inspiration. Sitting in the United States, he provided me with many electronic resources which were not available in free online repositories. His frequent long calls made me survive. My sincere thanks to Dr Varuni Bhatia for kindly and promptly sending me her brilliant book on Chiyatana. My heartfelt thanks to Dambarudhar Nath, Iliana Sen, Beppe Karlsson, Arkotong Longkumar, Arup Jyoti Saikia, Yengkhom Jilangamba and RK for their insightful comments on my work in different conferences in Dibrugarh, Silchar, Diphu and Guwahati. I would like to thank Gowsami-da of the Assam Sahitya Sabha Library in Jorhat, Rabhada of the Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies Library in Guwahati, Kalita-da of the Baligaon Gramya Puthibharal, Mrinal-da of the Nanda Talukdar Memorial Library in Guwahati, the proprietor of the Dhalar Satra Press, the Principal of the Jorhat Normal School, the staff in the Auniati Satra Library and the Notun Kamalbari Satra Library in Majuli for granting me permission to consult the materials in their respective libraries. I have greatly benefitted from the collections of the Prafulla Bezbarua Memorial Library in Sibsagar (for a very short period); the Dibrugarh University Library and the Bhatacharya Agency in Dibrugarh; the Kamrup Anusandhan Samiti Library, Dr Hari Krisna Das Memorial Library, the Assam State Archive, the Gauhati University Library, and the Indian Council of Historical Research iii

Acknowledgments

Library in Guwahati. In Calcutta, the National Library has always been a treasure hunting experience. I am very grateful to the Auniati Satradhikar Sri Pitambar Devagoswami for having welcome me with his gracious warmth and affection during my many visits to his Satra. I thank the veteran bhakats of the Satra for expressing their love and affection. I will never forget that sour-dal fish curry! I would also like to thank Dharmeswar for his many enthusiastic help during my visits. The help and scholarly commitment of the Notun Kamalabari Satradhikar Sri Narayan Chandra Goswami has been enormously inspiring. Thank you all!

iv

Introduction

Historicizing Bihu

“What politics do you see in Bihu? Can there be any politics in Bihu? Instead of fighting against the enemies, you have invented politics in Bihu! What kind of research is this?”, a lawyer told me quite agitatedly in Tinsukia, a dusty town in upper Assam, during one of my visits. I did not mind. Not because I did not take his condescending remarks and the Assamese nationalist anxiety seriously, but because my own reaction would not have been very different a few years earlier. In fact, my own research interest in understanding Bihu as a political project of Assamese nationalism came from an episode of a Bihu sanmilan in my home town, Lanka. As it happened, some of my friends decided to organize a Bihu sanmilan in our locality. It was a small neighbourly affair, with a school teacher as the president of the organizing committee. Despite his initial reluctance, he helped us by collecting a good amount of donations from his vast networks of friends. However, his new-found clout received a substantial setback when he delivered his speech as the president of the organizing committee during the Bihu flag-hoisting ceremony on the morning of the first day of bohag. Concentrating on the

Introduction

religious rituals of Bihu, he told the gathering that Bihu was a religious festival. Many of the elders did not like it but since it was a presidential speech, they tried their best to keep quiet. But his speech went on until finally an elderly person from the neighbourhood interrupted him, insisting that he should instead emphasize that Bihu was a secular festival. He suggested that the speaker should check his facts before accepting the ceremonial chair. The poor teacher, of course, fumbled but did not give in too easily. I can assure you that he was not a member of the RSS, as one would readily suspect today. At home, in the evening, almost all of us youngsters were taken to task for our decision to select him as the president of the committee. This moment made me think seriously about the peculiar place of Bihu in the strategies of Assamese nationalism. Thus, the object of my initial enquiries about Bihu was its purported secularism. When I started, armed with some variant of nationalist-Marxist discourse, I wanted to problematize the secular claims and credentials of the dominant upper-caste Assamese nationalism. However, I slowly began to realize that the scope of historical questions around Bihu was not confined to the binary of the secular and the religious. At any rate, the work of the anthropologist Talal Asad has made us much less certain about a clear, universal boundary between the religious and the secular.1 In the standard caste-Hindu Assamese world, three Bihus are celebrated or observed. In the beginning of the local calendar, the Bohag Bihu is observed in mid-April and marks the vernacular New Year. Magh Bihu is observed in mid-January after the harvest, and finally the Kati or Kongali Bihu is observed in the middle of October. The Bohag Bihu is called Rongali for rituals of different merriments, dances, and performances, while the Magh Bihu as Bhogali for abundance of food and feasting at that time of the year. The Kati Bihu is called Kongali or “beggar’s Bihu” because “there is nothing much to eat at

1

Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University press, 1993) and Formation of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, (Standford: Standford University Press, 2003).

2

Introduction

that time.”2 Despite Assamese nationalism’s stress on the universality of these three Bihus, they vary greatly in popularity in different parts of Assam. Bohag Bihu does not seem to attract as much interest in the lower part of Assam as it does in the upper. The now-standardized forms of urban Bihu gatherings – marked by its reliance on proscenium performances, “competitions”, public meetings and “cultural evenings” – have their greatest sway in lower Assam. In upper Assam, these urban Bihu gatherings coexist with other popular and more locally varied forms of Bihu like gachtalar bihu (the Bihu performance under tree), the rati bihu (the Bihu performance in the night), the huchori (the performance in every household by the village community as a ritual of yearly blessings). However, as shall be seen in the final chapter, the cultural impact of the standardized proscenium Bihu has come to increasingly prevail over and readapt the popular and community variants.3 In this dissertation, I will focus mostly on the politics of the construction of Bohag Bihu as the national festival of Assam over the last two centuries, although occasional references to other two Bihus will also be made. The primary objective of this dissertation is to complicate the widespread understanding of Bihu as the national festival of the Assamese people from time immemorial. The research indicates that both the performative grammar and the ideological coding of Bihu took their current shape through a series of interrelated social, political, economic, and cultural contestations in colonial and postcolonial conditions. Instead of assuming Bihu to have been an uninterrupted tradition, organically growing out of age-old agrarian practices, I wish to investigate the specific discursive and material conditions of colonial and postcolonial modernity under which the cultural practices of Bihu came to be crystallized in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My primary research question, therefore, is: why and how did Bihu become a central site for imagining and performing Assamese culture? In attempting to address 2 3

Prafulladatta Gowsami, Bohag Bihu of Assam and Bihu Songs (Guwahati: Assam Publication Board, 1988) 454. Jaykanta Gandhiya, interviewed by author, 25 March 2016, Digboi, Assam.

3

Introduction

this question, I proceed by interrogating and historicizing the claims of Bihu reflecting an authentic Assamese culture. Under what historical circumstances were the registers of authenticity shaped, contested and transformed? How did the notion of a popular festival become entangled with the contending and complementing ideas about class, nation and democracy? Much of the existing historical literature remains captive of a nationalist archive without necessarily calling into question the historical conditions of production of that archive. In trying to read crucial silences in this archive in terms of wider political and social processes at work, I offer an account of Bihu that points at a shifting but persistent tension between the national and the popular. What were the understandings, expectations, and strategies of the different sections of the nationalist elite as regards Bihu, in both colonial and postcolonial times? How were these concerns linked to the larger social and political conditions of Assam? Why did different themes dominate the public discourse around the festival in different phases over the last two hundred years? What were these themes? What role was played by the colonial and postcolonial state in several situations of social contestations? Did Bihu change with the coming of electoral democracy and organized political movements? To what extent did other cultural forms (such as bhaona or “folk music”) partake in this process of reconfiguration of Bihu? These are some of the questions that my thesis wishes to pursue by engaging the official and vernacular archives. The central problematic of the thesis is therefore focused on interrogating the category “authentic.” I try to understand why and how, in different historical moments in Assam proper, this question of authenticity variously defined the contours of collective imagination as well as governmental technologies in order to foreground a sanitized and standardized template of the Bihu festival. The different attempts to understand, explain, organize and regulate Bihu all drew on some notion of cultural authenticity. But in the long historical process under scrutiny, the category itself seems to have 4

Introduction

shifted and changed: its biography has been continually restructured and restrategized to articulate different imaginations of the nation. To think historically of Bihu is to necessarily think through such shifting alignments of Assamese nationalism.

REVIEWING THE LITERATURE

It is rather surprising that in spite of Bihu’s perceived centrality to Assamese social and cultural life, till date no full-length academic monograph has been written on the history of Bihu. While folklorists, anthropologists and travel-writers have contributed a few monographs on the subject, the absence of historians has tended to obscure how recent the histories of Bihu may be; at least in the form we know it today. The works of the eminent folklorist Prafulladatta Gowsami spanning over the nineteen fifties and sixties continue to shape the mainstream discussions of Bihu. In Folk Literature of Assam (1954), Goswami defined “culture” as an amalgamation of “the basic customs and traditions, rites and rituals which together foster a certain social pattern and a certain outlook among people living in a certain area.”4 True to the mid-twentieth-century nationalist understanding, he insisted that in essence the “Assamese culture” was “Aryan culture” (best revealed in the fact that “Assamese language itself is Sanskritic”), although the “distinctive features of Assamese culture are seen in the modification effected by racial fusion.”5 This approach was developed in particular relation to Bihu in 1957 when he published his celebrated Bihu Songs of Assam that sought to provide the “cultural background” of certain festival songs.6 In 1966, Goswami reiterated his position in The Springtime Bihu of Assam, which investigated the anthropological structure of Bihu song,

4

Prafulladatta Gowsami, The Folk Literature of Assam (Gauhati: Lawyers Book Stall, 1954). 9. Ibid, 9. 6 Prafulladatta Gowsami, Bihu Songs of Assam (Gauhati: Lawyers Book Stall, 1957). 5

5

Introduction

dance and ritual practices.7 Gowsami’s final book on the subject, Bohag Bihu of Assam and Bihu Songs was published in 1988. It developed his earlier implicit assumptions into an explicit and forceful statement on the synthesis and syncretism of Assamese national culture. In his understanding, Bihu was every bit as syncretic as the Assamese culture itself: “It is also pointer to those who advocate Advasi culture as distinct from the broad Indian pattern of life that the Assamese speaking people themselves have evolved out of a fusion of local Adivasi people with settlers from other parts of India.”8 In the historical context of Assam, Goswami argued, “none of the avowedly Brahminical festivals can be taken in Assam” to exist in original forms, either “because the Adivasi pull is strong or because it is the agricultural setting which still determines the social temper of the people.”9 Bihu, in other words, was the evidence par excellence of the mingling and harmonization of mainland Indian and tribal elements. Goswami was sensitive to the question of change (he noticed significant shifts in the patterns in Bihu observances in postcolonial Assam), but for him the change pointed only to direction: unity in diversity. This was indeed the most influential trope in the Nehruvian-era literature on Bihu. H. Barua and J. D. Baveja’s 1956 book, The Fairs and Festivals in Assam, was one of the pioneering books on the subject of festivals in Assam. Largely an introductory survey of different fairs and festivals of the then undivided Assam, this volume was held together by a romantic nationalist sensibility that combined a vague celebration of cultural diversity in the frontier with an anthropological generalization of the fertility thematic. The authors claimed that “since the [sic] fertility, whether of the crops or of women, was vital for life, something had to be done to promote and help it.”10 And thus, they argued, “[f]olk dances, as such, are mostly symbolic in temper and purposes; the 7

Prafulladatta Gowsami, The Springtime Bihu of Assam (Gauhati: Lawyers Book Stall, 1966). Gowsami, Bohag Bihu, 452. 9 Ibid, 454. 10 H. Barua and J. Baveja, The Fairs and Festivals of Assam (Gauhati: Lawyers Book Stall, 1956)14. 8

6

Introduction

ancient man used to retire to the field before the season commenced and weave its drama in the art.”11 In such anthropological musings, Bihu was hardly more than a ritual complex performed through songs and dances that reflected the essential features of an ancient Assamese culture. Its historicity, and in particular its history under colonialism, was necessarily downplayed, if not completely silenced, in order to produce it as a stable anthropological verity. In this dissertation, I hope to delineate the constitutive conditions of these very discursive strategies. My contention is that only by looking at the specific conjunctures of nationalist politics in colonial and postcolonial Assam, we will be able to understand the complex cultural demands placed on the festival by the early nationalist anthropologists. While much of the mainstream understanding of Bihu in contemporary Assam continues to be governed by this line of thinking, in recent years some attempts have been made to explore alternative analytics. Maan Barua, for example, emphasizes the “ecological basis” of Bihu observances.12 In arguing that there exists a direct correspondence between the shifts in ecological settings and the ritualistic patterns of Bihu, Barua offers a rather simplistic cause-effect model that crucially misses the historical dimensions of the festival and reduces the cultural to a weak reflection of the natural. For instance, he argues that “social functions of the fertility rites that permeate Bihu regards such rituals as originating from a demographic need to increase the population when factors of the host ecosystem induced a very high rate of human mortality.”13 Comparatively, I find the contemporary anthropological investigations of Rehana Kheshgi more productive as she explores the “frictions that shape the narrative of generational change” in present-day Bihu discourses and practices.14 Kheshgi’s explorations, however, are exclusively confined to the present. My work, on the 11

Ibid, 14. Maan Barua, “The Ecological Basis of the Bihu Festivals of Assam”, Folklore, 120: 2 (2009), 213-223. 13 Ibid, 218. 14 Rehana Kheshgi, “Navigating Generational Frictions through Bihu Festival Performance in Assam, India”, Music Cultures, 44: 2 (2017), 48-73. 12

7

Introduction

contrary, attempts to provide a historical depth to such observed facts of contestation, friction and change. In doing so, I often find myself in conversation with the changing historiography of nationalism in Assam. The complex relationship between colonialism, nationalism and peoplehood in Assam has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention across academic generations. Amalendu Guha’s seminal work Planter Raj to Swaraj provided an early typology in the form of understanding Assamese nationalism as “little” in opposition to the pan-Indian “great” nationalism. According to Guha, “great” nationalism was grounded “in a feeling of all-India unity,” while “little” nationalism was based on “regional-linguistic unity.”15 As my work will try to demonstrate, this easy hierarchical split between the two does not address the complexity of nationalism in the region. Hiren Gohain complicated this position by tracing the roots of a popular democratic national consciousness to the local Satra institutions and its continuation under the colonial condition when the Assamese language warriors envisaged a “popular” literature.16 Despite his articulation of the complexity, for Gohain the popular largely remains an ahistorical, a priori construction that was external to the elaborations of colonial governmentality. My work emphasizes the opposite. Sanjib Baruah provided a significant challenge to Guha’s centralist notion of nation, community and identity. In a two-way approach, he argued that the different secessionist movements were the result of political mismanagement, while at the same time they must be seen as articulating specific subnational aspirations that could not be subsumed under a pan-Indian narrative.17 This has helped me think of the tensions within and around the practices and discourses of Assamese nationalism more effectively, even if in evaluations of particular episodes our judgments differ. 15

Amalendu Guha, Planter Raj to Swaraj-Freedom Struggle and Electoral Politics in Assam (1977; New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2006), 275. 16 Hiren Gohain, Assam – A Burning Question (Guwahati, Spectrum, 1985), 31. 17 Sanjib Baruah, India against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), xi-xii.

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Introduction

QUESTIONS OF METHOD:

How does, then, a historian approach a festival like Bihu? The historiography of festivals in colonial and postcolonial South Asia is still almost a blank field. This is quite remarkable, given the massive spate of interest that different local festivals generated among the colonial bureaucrats, missionaries, anthropologists and travellers. It is hardly within the scope of this dissertation to provide a comprehensive account of the evolving nature of the colonial discourse on South Asian festivals. However, a couple of broad points may be in order for placing the history of Bihu in a larger perspective. The initial interest in non-Christian festivals often came from the evangelists who had been quick to point out the wastefulness, meaninglessness and primitiveness of the local celebrations. This was tied to a strategic interest, as spelled out by the missionary John Murdoch in his preface to Hindu and Muhammadan Festivals: Compiled from Wilson, Wilkins, Crooke, Sell, Hughes and Other Writers (1904): One great difficulty everywhere in India is to secure attention for the Gospel Message. The people have no deep sense of religion and do not feel the need of the physician of souls. On the contrary, they are warmly interested in their festivals. .... Christian workers should, therefore, have a good acquaintance with the principal festivals, their origins, the legends connected with them and their mode of celebration. 18

Murdoch argued that in the festivals of the “remote east, and especially in India”, it was possible “to find the living representation of ancient observances.” But he also noticed the colonial government’s “disdain” for Indian festivals, particularly “under the prevalence of the doctrine which regards public holidays as the deduction from public

18

John Murdoch, Hindu and Muhammadan festivals: compiled from Wilson, Wilkins, Crooke, Sell, Hughes and Other Writers (London: Christian Literature Society for India, 1904), xi.

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Introduction

wealth.” As a result, he pointed out, “the festivals have already diminished both in frequency and attraction.”19 This interplay between the economic logic of productivity and the investigative logic of ethnography largely defined the discursive terrain of festivals in colonial India.20 The practice of understanding popular festivals in terms of reified categories such as Hindu and Muslim became increasingly common over the course of the nineteenth century. If Murdoch was looking for the traces of “ancient observance”, the object of John Campbell Oman’s 1907 book was to “interpret, however, imperfectly, the present-day Indian to the English public, [through] … the legends and stories” that would “throw light upon the habits or the mental peculiarities of the Indian people.” Despite his claim to include both Hindu and Muslim festivals, Oman’s descriptions of the Hindu festivals was more substantial which he justified on the ground of their “enormous and varied following, [their] heterogeneous structure” and particularly for their “fascinating remoteness from European feeling and sentiment.”21 The exoticization of the South Asian festivals, and the repeated insistence of the colonial elite on their perceived display of cruelty and wastefulness at times invited direct government interference and prohibition of rituals such as hook swinging.22 By the early decades of the twentieth century, the Indian elite embarked on a more systematic defence of the so-called traditional festivals. R. Manohar Lal’s 1933 book Among the Hindus: A Study of Festivals can be taken as a typical example that tweaked the prevailing colonial argument that the “customs and manners of Hindus” were a “strange and inexplicable mixture of new and old” to a nationalistic end, emphasizing 19

Ibid, 2. See Sanjna Mukhopadhyay, “Time Off: Holidays, Leaves and Questions of Work in Nineteenth-Century Bengal”, unpublished M Phil in Social Sciences dissertation, Jadavpur University, 2012 for an interesting discussion on the colonial politics of holiday lists. 21 John Campbell Oman, The Brahmans, Theists and Muslims of India: Studies of Goddess-Worship in Bengal, Caste, Brahmanism and Social Reform, with descriptive sketches of curious festivals, ceremonies and faquirs (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907) 22 G. A. Oddie, “Regional and Other Variations in Popular Religion in India: Hook‐Swinging in Bengal and Madras in the Nineteenth Century”, The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 3: 3 (1992), 191-200. 20

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Introduction

that in these festivals “the progressive [remained] entwined with the conservative and the beautiful with the new.”23 Alluding to the “immoral system of mythology” in Indian sastric tradition, he admitted that “[a]dultery, fornication, drunkenness and lying remain ugly things whether they are attributed to deities or Men.”24 But, on the whole, he pleaded for a modernist reform of “Hindu Festivals” in alignment with the colonially derived codes of morality, rather than their outright prohibition. Brahmabandhava Upadhyaya, the author of a 1924 Bengali book Pala-Parban, was much less apologetic in his vigorous argument for acknowledging the progressive core of the Hindu religion and its rituals. He admitted that there was some “rubbish” in popular festivals also insisted that, if observed sensibly, such rubbish could be seen as deriving “from pure gold.”25 In the wake of anticolonial nationalist mobilizations, the middle-class interest in and defence of local festivals related to a strategy of reaffirming the sovereignty of the Indian cultural domain, entailing positive identification of progressive elements in South Asian cultures.26 This historical trajectory of colonial denigration and nationalist reform of local festivals – of course played out in different variations on different regional scales across the subcontinent, involving diverse and dissimilar local factors – still awaits its historians. However, even a broad understanding of this trajectory makes it clear that histories of colonial festivals will require very different understandings of the links between the national and the popular, of the multiple mediations through which festivals were observed, recorded and explained in the official archive, and of the necessity of reading against the grain. In my dissertation I have tried to remain sensitive to this issue of colonial difference by using a standard methodology of critically reading primary sources in their appropriate historical contexts. I have sought to interrogate the given23

R. Manohar Lal, Among the Hindus: A Study of Hindu Festivals (Cawnpore: Minerva Press, 1933), xi. Ibid, xxiii. 25 Brahmabandhava Upadhyaya, Pal-Parvvan (Chandannagar: Prabartak Publishing House, 1924),13. 26 Cf. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993). 24

11

Introduction

ness of categories by trying to understand their ideological and political functions at particular historical moments. I have tried to identify the various shifts in the Bihu discourse in relation to their material and ideological conditions. I have endeavoured to be mindful of both the performative rituals and the discursive claims, although details about the former were not always easily obtainable for the nineteenth and early twentieth century. While I am glad to be able to use a vast vernacular archive that most historians have so far overlooked in relation to the history of Bihu, I am also very much aware of the limits of this archive. Popular practices did not produce manifestoes or memoranda. The vernacular sources were usually produced by cultural and political elites who had very specific interests in pushing the agenda of some variety of nationalism. Nationalism, in its various avatars in colonial and postcolonial Assam, not only actively worked to enlist the support of the popular to legitimize its political claim; it also constantly tried to discipline, regulate and reform the popular. Therefore, instead of assuming a pregiven unity and continuity of the popular, I have tried to isolate the different issues on which, at different historical moments, various political and cultural elites pleaded for intervention, supervision, and regulation. Sometimes they seem to have been successful, and sometimes they were not. In mapping this tension between the national and the popular, I have tried to present Bihu as a site of continuous contestation. My thinking about the festival has been guided by a series of readings from critical theory of popular culture, of whom most the useful have been Mikhail Bakhtin, Antonio Gramsci and Stuart Hall.27 Mikhail Bakhtin’s pioneering work on the carnival, particularly his distinction between the carnival and other official feasts, has been immensely helpful in shaping some of the 27

Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Midland Book Edition) 1984. Antonio Gramsci, Selection from the Prison Notebooks, Trans: Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, (New York: International Publishers, 1971), Stuart Hall, “Notes on Deconstructing the Popular,” in John Storey (ed), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader (Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaft, 1994)

12

Introduction

concerns of this project. His differentiation between the festive times and the everyday, the temporary suspension and even inversion of the everyday norms in the time of the carnival, have been quite productive in approaching the centrality of festival in the nationalist practice of discipline and spectacle. However, his understanding of carnival as the “temporal suspension, both ideal and real, of hierarchical rank created during carnival time a special type of communication impossible in everyday life,”28 does not completely apply to the historical context under discussion. I have benefitted from reading James von Geldern’s revision of the Bakhtinian model in the context of postTsarist Russia. Von Geldern pointed out that “carnival procession was a favourable pastime of Peter and carnivals were part of coronation festivities from the age of Catharine to that the final Romanov Nicholas.”29 This suggests that the idea of suspension of power hierarchies or even reversal may be historically more complicated than Bakhtin’s dichotomy between the popular and the official suggests. In demonstrating work how, when it came to festivals, even the radical ideology of Bolshevism “combined tradition with innovation” by “[d]rawing on idioms from traditional popular culture, liturgical rites, and even tsarist ceremonies”, Von Geldern opens up an explanatory horizon that shows how different regimes of power remain folded in one festival.30 Methodologically, it was useful to read Emmanuel La Roy Laduri’s fascinating account of the carnival in Romans, a small town in sixteenth-century France, which showed how the

carnival

rituals

of

violence

expressed

social

antagonisms

and

serious

discontentment against the local gentry. Instead of hierarchical suspension or for that matter reversal, “each group entered violently into Carnival, confronting the other with

28

Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 10. James von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals, 1917-1920 (London: California University Press, 1993) 55. 30 Ibid, 8. 29

13

Introduction

theatrical gestures leading up to the final massacre.”31 To recognize the potential for violence and social contestation in festivals which are often officially described as happy celebrations of amity and peace is a lesson that resonates beyond its immediate empirical context. Similarly, Mona Ozouf’s captivating account of festivals during the French Revolution – particularly her insights regarding the “transfer of sacrality” from the religious feast days to the new festivals, the “identical conceptualization” of festivals and demonstrations, and the recasting of space and time in order to conjure a new community based on new values – has inspired many ideas in my thesis. Ozouf argues that such “recasting of the categories of social experience make the festival seem very much like a new secular religion.”32 In spite of a vastly different historical context, this observation has informed my attempt to understand Bihu in relation to the neoVaishnavite bhakti movement and the secular popular.

OVERVIEW OF CHAPTERS

Since the colonization of Assam in the early nineteenth century, the charge of obscenity was one of the most persistent elements in the modern discourse on Bihu. In my first chapter, I explore the specific allegations, observations, and prescriptions regarding obscenity in Bihu by the colonial administrators and the emergent native intelligentsia. I start with a close examination of what came to be reported as routine “elopement and abduction” of unmarried women by men during the days of the festival. In situating this claim in terms of a larger discussion of colonial understanding of Assamese marriage practices, I point to the fractures in the local society, and demonstrate how a 31

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Carnival in Romans, Trans: Mary Feeney (New York: George Braziller Inc, 1979) xvi. 32 Mona Ozouf, Festivals and French Revolutions, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), xi.

14

Introduction

new alliance between the colonial judiciary and the “respectable” Assamese consolidated patriarchal power and criminalized the emotional world and cultural practices of the lower class. The other locus of the question of obscenity was the dances performed in Bihu. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Calcutta educated middle class reformers began to openly castigate the so-called debased performances, some prescribing a total prohibition, while others trying to decide on a boundary between pure rites and corrupted performances. This mode of argument again changed towards the last quarter of the century, when the Assamese language warriors took over. Now, the obscenity in Bihu was largely understood as a question of obscenity in language and genre. However, as these vernacular publicists, most of whom were trained or based in Calcutta, began to debate the proportions to which Bihu was vulgar (and thus dispensable) and authentic (and thus worthy of saving), a creative tension developed about the popular itself. Throughout the early part of the twentieth century, this tension was articulated in different registers: the dichotomies of Lower Assam and Upper Assam, the difference between Mahapurushiya and Damodariya sects, and particularly the distinction between Durga Puja and Bihu were three major sites of the debate. In the final section of the chapter, I discuss how in the wake of large-scale Congress mobilizations since the 1920s, the discussions of obscenity were overwritten by a strategic emphasis on the sacredness of Bihu by foregrounding its rural, rather than urban, character, by synchronizing and coordinating new festival codes, and by mobilizing middle-class sensibilities through hybrid literary engagements. As an aestheticized expression of a sanitized rusticity, Bihu was now constituted as the proud symbol of the eternal Assamese nation. In the second chapter, I turn to investigating the conceptual frame of bhava and rasa through which the nationalist philosophical-aesthetic understanding of Bihu came to be organized since the early twentieth century. This discussion necessarily takes us to a consideration of the adjacent cultural form of bhaona and the growing institutional 15

Introduction

hegemony of the satra networks, both of which, over the course of the century, would come to bear major significance for the understanding and organization of Bihu. In this chapter, I follow the debates and commentaries on these two concepts in the Vaishnavite literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the attending discussions of the idea of performance and the difference between poetry and prose. Particularly focusing on the Auniati Satradhikar Deva Dutta Deva Gowsami and his production of so called Bengali bhaonas in mid-nineteenth-century Assam, I attempt to trace the different narrative strategies through which the precolonial bhaona aesthetic was reconfigured. I try and understand this process in relation to the impact of the colonial networks and the acquaintance with the new metropolitan performance culture. Another new genre called fouzia bhaona developed in the Kamalabari Sattra in the presence of a new, non-local audience in the new colonial urban centres of upper Assam. Unlike Auniati’s so-called Bengali language performance, through the occasional use of a ‘Hindustani’ language, this Bhaona genre aimed at catering to its ‘fouz’ or army audience. These experiments presented a challenge to the Assamese language activists of the early twentieth century who insisted that as an independent language Assamese had the full capacity to be expressive of universal rasas. The production of a new genre called ‘Matri Bhasha Bhaona’ in the 1930s was symptomatic of this purism. As I demonstrate in the chapter, much of these discussions explicitly spilled into the contemporary discourse on Bihu. The production of Bihu as an object of literary and linguistic activism was anchored in these discussions about different rasas in Assamese language. By tracing this history which previous commentators have barely mentioned, I intend to understand the complexities of the broad shift from the performative to the textual in Bihu, where the language activists began to conduct cultural gatekeeping to restrict the utterances to authentically Assamese literary expressions. However, the very nature of Bihu also necessitated a lingering discussion about performances. Interesting arguments were made in relation to pronunciation and 16

Introduction

recitation, revealing the nationalist elites’ deep anxiety and ambivalence about simultaneously maintaining a hierarchy between the high and the folk as well as closing the gap between the literate and the illiterate subjects of the nation. This discursive climate was further complicated by the increasing middle-class consensus in Assam to understand the Mahapurushiya precepts as the sarbajanin religion of the Assamese nation, and the acrimonious comparisons between Bengal’s Chaitanya and Assam’s Sankara. Bihu’s stability, and its authentic bhav, was repeatedly invoked as a counterpoint against Chaitanya’s transgressive religion. Picking up a thread from the first chapter, the third chapter examines in details the new culture of organizing festivals from the nineteen twenties. Aimed at creating and consecrating a pantheon of nationalist icons, numerous new occasions such as the Lachit Divas and the Joymoti Tithi Utsav came to be invented, publicized and arranged across Assam, while some old fairs and fetes were reinvented with sharp nationalist messages. This was also the time when the Assamese diaspora was encouraged to be involved in public Magh Bihu celebrations in Calcutta and other mainland Indian cities. It seems that these new festivals, although centred on different historical and mythical figures and events, were following a common grammar of rituals, performances and aesthetic sensibility. Looking closely at the practices, programmes and promotional literature of these festivals, this chapter tries to understand this grammar in which Bihu had a pride of place. Here I particularly focus on the ways in which the neo-vaishnavite bhakti discourse was invoked and naturalized as incontestably Assamese in these festivals. Through this discursive manipulation, a new kind of subject was envisaged for the Assamese nation. The significance of these overlapping networks of different nationalist festivals, driven by a high literary aesthetic idiom, becomes clear when we track the constant traffic in symbols, performances and phrases between the new sarbajanin Sankari religion, its bhakti rituals and Bihu. Particular cultural demands were placed on the performative body. Particular imaginations of the Assamese popular was 17

Introduction

prioritized and preferred over certain others. The production of good nationalist subjects remained an explicit common goal of all these activities. Indeed, the shifting boundary between the sacred and the secular festivals appears clearer from the contemporary organization of the Bihu festivals particularly in the rural areas as the part of congress mobilisation strategy. I discuss how these activists both drew from and helped generating a new set of festival ethics that attempted to bridge the spirit of popular fairs and the rituals of disciplined political meetings. While this makeshift truce between the national and the popular did not survive for long, it certainly provided a template for the new Bihu, which could be alternatively “political”, “sacred”, or “cultural” according to the organizers’ demands. In the last two chapters of the thesis, I explore the postcolonial career of Bihu. The fourth chapter critically considers the early postcolonial government’s approach to Bihu and its radical contestations by left-wing social and political movements. With the simultaneous establishment of an All India Radio Station and a University in Guwahati in 1948, new actors entered the game. In trying to understand the recasting of Bihu in terms of the interrelationship of these institutions, this chapter examines the attempts to create a distinctly Assamese Kamrupi School of music, to reclassify several popular songs as “Bihu songs”, and to encourage studies of folklore and rituals. The consolidation of the elite nationalist imagination of Bihu under the financial and logistical support of an upper-caste-dominated postcolonial government, however, did not go unchallenged. Many of the establishment’s claims were rejected or re-articulated by the Srimanta Sankaradeva Sangha, a lower-caste socio-religious movement which sought to fight the smooth transfer of government resources to the Satra networks. Bihu again became a site for debating the authentic tradition. A rather different conceptualization of Bihu also developed over the course of the 1950s since the RCPIled sharecroppers’ insurgency between 1948 and 1952. Building on an older socialist tradition within Indian nationalism, the communist activists of the time emphasized the 18

Introduction

agrarian origin and the labouring context of Bihu. In many ways, however, this leftradical counter-coding of Bihu shared a conceptual unity with the increasingly popular ideas of the Srimanta Sankaradeva Sangha’s new bhakti movement. Tracking the literary, dramatic and musical compositions of various IPTA activists, I discuss the changing understandings of Bihu and its discursive resonance in the debate around two notions of culture (Krishti and Sanskriti) in the 1950s, the anti-riot cultural troupes of the 1960s, and the reinvention of the Moamaria revolt by the left historians in the 1970s. The final chapter begins with the Assam movement (1979-1985) and what one commentator on the period identified as its explicit attempt to ‘politicize’ Bihu. I analyze the Bihu conventions organized under the aegis of the movement, a form which owed much of its shape to the processes discussed in the third chapter. But I also pay attention to the politics of showcasing the different musical instruments of Bihu, particularly the Bihu Dhol (drum) which was constituted as a symbol of the masculine might of the Assamese nation in the wake of the 1983 riots. Criteria of indigeneity of materials, sounds and instrument-makers were now widely discussed in the vernacular public sphere. If the Assam Movement’s emphasis was on masculinity and eternity of Bihu, the early postcolonial left-radical tradition’s celebration of agrarian and labouring contexts of Bihu was critically reclaimed by the ULFA in the 1990s. After comparing and contrasting these two styles of yoking Bihu to defined political agenda, I point at the growing trend of organizing ethnic community-specific Bihus. The two cases of Moran-Matak and Ahom Bihus are critically examined to identify the peculiar process by which, on the one hand, the performances were increasingly standardized and brought to proscenium, and, on the other hand, specific small (mostly sartorial) markers were introduced by different identity movements to claim uniqueness for their respective Bihus. In the process, the academic works of the left intellectuals of an earlier generation were very differently appropriated by the identity movements in their attempt at forging new authenticities. The chapter ends with a comment on the 19

Introduction

relationship between these developments and how despite claims of different “tribal” Bihus a standard urban “Assamese Bihu” was standardised with emphasising local traditions as origin of its constitution.

20

Chapter One

Scenes of the Obscene: The Lewd, the Rustic and Bihu

ELOPEMENTS AND ABDUCTIONS

The peasant positioned in the upper or lower rungs of the social ladder might have been left wondering by the pronouncements against Bihu made by Anundaram Dakeal Phookun, one of the towering personalities of Assamese nationalism during his stint as Extra Assistant Commissioner in Nagaon in mid-nineteenth century colonial Assam. His biographer and cousin, Goonabhiram Barooa wrote, “He hated obscenity. During Bohag Bihu, objectionable types of dances were performed in Nagaon. He put an end to them and convinced the people not to participate in such activities again.’ 1 The peasants, it seems, were not convinced, as the issue of obscenity continued to impinge upon Bihu practices and remained an irritating social pitfall for both the colonial administrators and emerging Assamese publicists even till a decade after Phookun’s 1

Goonabhiram Barooa, Anandaram Dhekial Phukanar Jiban Charita (1880; Guwahati: Assam publication Board, 1971), 148.

Chapter One

death. Bihu was articulated through the obscenity metaphor and the structure of familial, particularly the evangelical patriarchal values to be articulated with it. However, at least in the early years of colonialism, the idea of obscenity and its relation with Bihu was not universal, it had specific locational connotations. The upper Assam practice of Bihu was seen, for instance, from the prism of lower Assam familiarity. Haliram Dhekiyal Phukan, the revenue seristadar of lower Assam, in his 1829 book, Assam Buranji, emphasised such a position. Declaring, Bihu as a festival of dissolute men and women folk among the common people, he informed: From the last day of the month of Sot until the next six days, instead of Charok Puja, Bihu music and dances are observed. In this festival, women folk from among the common people and dissolute men get together and perform dances and music of a very objectionable type. This festival is common in the countryside; however this corrupting tradition is not observed in Kamrup. It is observed in Saumar [Upper Assam].2

Dhekiyal Phukan’s emphasis on the distinction between Lower Assam (Kamarupa or Ratna Pīṭh) and Upper Assam, Saumara, demands attention. His articulation between “corrupting tradition” and its connection with Saumara, then still under the old Tungkhungia dynasty, under the new arrangement, represented the centrality of lower Assam as the new location of power. The focus of reform in this British administered part, its familiarity, comparative recognisability with the Mughal parts of Bengal had provided a standard of understanding and evaluating customs that now were to be premised on Kamrup or the lower Assam experience. Of course, this was to significantly change over the course of the nineteenth century. But in 1829, Haliram’s attempt was directed at separating the more appropriate practices of lower Assam from the disagreeable practices of upper Assam. We shall see in the later sections, how the articulation of profane lower Assam was part of nationalist anxiety particularly in late 2

Haliram Dhekiyal Phukan, Assam Buranji, (1829, Guwahati: Publication Board Assam, 2005), 79-80.

22

Chapter One

nineteenth and early twentieth century Calcutta; but it was only a moment when the articulation of pristine structure of lower Assam was discursively possible. Dhekiyal Phukan’s locational context of understanding festival and its connection to the category of obscene however shifted to an abstracted universal question of “national” festival when regions and communities were increasingly understood from the standard category of nationalism, particularly by the colonial bureaucrats. William Robinson’s 1841 book “A Descriptive Account of Assam”, instead of specifying regional context of festival observation, articulated the “amusement of Assamese.” 5 He informed, “The amusement of Assamese are few, and these are, for the most part, of an innocent nature.” However, the task of enumerating such “amusement” of a particular community was significant “since it is here their character, left entirely to itself, manifest its natural bias unequivocally.”7 In his enumeration of “Assamese amusement”, except for the children’s play or the practices of story-telling, the representative structure of “rudeness” was a general position. As he claimed, “dexterity which forms the art of the tumbler and the juggler, as well as taste for buffoonery” represented “a part of character of a rude people.”8 The same understanding continued when he claimed that the “musical instruments are in general rude” or the “many of the native melodies posses a plaintive, touching simplicity, and others, on the contrary, a peculiar wild originality less pleasing.”9 These categorical understandings of primitive rudeness, or “wild originality” were, one might add, not outside the dictum of obscenity. However, not in the physical, sexual sense, but in the strange logic of colonial modernity, the articulation of rude or rustic could find a discursive affinity within the structure of the obscene. We will come to that soon. “Their dance”, he continued, “is very rude, and utterly void of that graceful and measured step, so much admired in the 5

William Robinson, A Descriptive Account of Assam (1841, Guwahati: Bhabani Print and Publication, 2011) 268. Ibid, 268. 8 Ibid, 268-269. 9 Ibid, 269. 7

23

Chapter One

dancing girls of Hindusthan.”10 There were, “no perfume, no elegant and attractive attire ornament their figures.” And again he claimed, “nor are their heads decked with sweet-scented flowers, entwined with exquisite art, about their beautiful hair.” 11 Robinson, along with “Assamese amusement” discussed, at least, three festivals in his book. First the Bihus- both Magh and “Baishak” Bihu, and the Holi and Durga Puja festivals. The apparent tones of the spectacular in these festivals were dominating in his description, but there was a slight hierarchical split to it. For instance, when he discussed Holi or Durga Puja- the spectacular and exotic appendages were overwhelmingly dominant, and one could see a distinct split between everyday and the spectacular in his narrative structure. For instance, when he discussed Holi, he wrote in detail how in the final night, “when large fires are lit…and around which groups of children are seen dancing and screaming like so many little infernals.”12 Robinson did not want to elaborate on Durga Puja as people were “conversant with the customs of the Hindus,” but giving somewhat a local description, he wrote, “The river on this occasion presents a scene of peculiar animation, and the banks were crowded with spectators, rich and poor, old and young, who come from many miles round, arrayed in their gayest costumes.”13 The boats were “most gaudily painted, each containing a complement of form twelve to twenty men, according to its size. The emulation of the native gentry, and that of the crew, is to the greatest degree exciting, and the whole scene is one that baffles description.”14 However when such spectacular scenery which had baffled description came to Bihu, his narrative structure became overwhelmingly modest despite his emphasis that “Assamese have two principal festivals.” 15 He declared, that the “the first festival of the year is termed the Baisak Bihu and is

10

Ibid, 269 Ibid, 269. 12 Ibid, 270. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid, 269. 11

24

Chapter One

celebrated in the first three days of Baisak…On this occasion people devote the whole of the first day to mutual visits and compliments.”16 However, the tone of everyday came when he talked about in some detail about the ritual of cow bathing. He claimed that they were worshiped “with peculiar honours.” “They are first sprinkled with holy water, like the horse in the circusian games, or bathed in the sacred stream of the Brahmaputra.”17 Then, he continued, “the devotees next prostrate themselves before them, their horns are pained with various colours, and their necks are decked with garlands of flowers and strings of fruit.” And finally, “the consecrated animals are then driven in a body through the villages, by crowds of people who make a discordant noise upon various musical instruments. During the remainder of the day of cows are permitted to stray wherever they please..”18 He concluded the description of Bohag Bihu by narrating the Bihu performance. He wrote on the next two days, “large groups of people parade about, attended by numbers of dancing girls, who pause from time to time to exhibit their wanton movements, and charm the audience with their lascivious songs.”19 This detail discussion about the “cow worshipping,” rather than giving emphasis to, say, Bihu performance of the next two days, led Robinson to emphasize Bihu’s particular attunement with the everyday. He also discussed briefly about the Magh Bihu, defining it as the celebration of harvest home. The centrality of Robinson’s understanding of Bihu, particularly its similarity with the everyday, as we will see, had a serious discursive affinity in nineteenth century Assam. And that means such particular attunement between the everyday and the spectacular could discursively be possible to articulate as the general condition of the social. We will come to that soon. But a little discussion about increasing articulation of social would useful here. The idea of familial, particularly the violation of familial norms, the reaffirmation of patriarchal 16

Ibid. Ibid. 18 Ibid, 269-270. 19 Ibid, 270. 17

25

Chapter One

values through invoking the family discourse were some of the major ideas that dominated the constitution of the social in the mid nineteenth century Assam, particularly after the publication of first Assamese journal called Orunodoi in 1846. The networks between missionary evangelical spirit and local notable were developed through the articulation of issues of the social, particularly the practice of elopement, problems in the contractual nature of marriage promise etc. Declared as the writing of a local notable, a note published in Orunodoi in December 1847 titled “Bibah Nuhuakoi Suali Ana” (loosely “Living together without any wedding ritual.”) The note, criticizing that the most of the Assamese Hindus were practicing elopement, it claimed that even many notables after having “ three four children” only then in the old age would take marriage vows. Along with elopement, the contractual nature of marriage promise enabled many to give “daughters to highest bidder even promising her to someone beforehand” and caused chaos to the family, the author claimed, as the discontent party would go to courts to reassert his claim. In the process, to maintain the court expenses etc they had to sale properties and live in a destitute condition thereafter.20 But it was not just the local notables that frequently contributed on these issues in the journal. The members of American Baptist missionary would participate, criticizing different issues of the social. A little later in March, 1854, Robert Blade, a missionary wrote how different “bad traditions are going in Guwahati town.” Titled “Asom Desahar Yuba Musalman Sakalar Prati Eti Nibadan,” he request the young Muslims to stop traditions of “natshalas, where bad women sing illicit songs and perform dances” While in the Muslim marriages, he claimed, “ People invite dancing women and without their children and wife, the men stay back the whole night with these bad women.” 21 This serious articulation of problem of “Assamese social” life received further entitlement when Anundaram Dakeal Phookun, made a connection between the question of 20 21

Anonymous, “Bibah Nuhuakoi Suali Ana”, Orunodoi (December 1847), 91. Robert Blade, “Asam Deshar Yuba Musalman Sakalar Prati Eti Nibadan”, Orunodai (March 1854), 43.

26

Chapter One

elopement with somewhat the urban interaction with the filthy women. Inaugurating the classic governmental regulatory discourse, Anundaram Dakeal Phookun, in an April 1848 essay named, Bibhisar Bisayk,22 with an English subtitle, “Against Adultery and Fornication,” fixed the question of adultery with the physical well being of the self. He claimed that the general environment of the practice of adultery in Assam could seal the fate of an individual with incurable diseases, destitution, even insolvency leading to imprisonment, if he had been in regular relations with ‘filthy women.’ 23 With this developmental logic he also addressed the status of conjugality among the lower classes and claimed that “one is divorcing his wife or husband in no time.” 24 The only way out, Anundaram, suggested the shastra-prescribed wedding rituals as the only solution because then, “no one would run away from his or her partner.”25 Phookun’s essay was, in some sense, a survey of different practices of adultery in Assam proper or how different practices actually violating the familial values. He articulated different practices of adultery, their reasons (for instance the husband’s ill treatment of wife, lack of education etc) but those reasons could be resolved through the explicit practice of marriage rituals. However, making an extension of the every profanity of the social with Bihu, Anundaram, at the end, discussed it as a “big black stain on the face of Assam.”26 Robinson’s articulation of Bihu that it was attuned with the daily activities of the people is crucial here. Robinson’s similarities between the everyday of the “rude” people and its extension in the festive extraordinary, was now articulated as the universal profanity of that social. The reduction of that split itself was the mediation point through which the everyday and the Bihu was connected. Anundaram wrote,

Aa, ‘Byabhichar’ Orunudoi (April 1848), 24-32. Ibid, 24-28. 24 Ibid, 31. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid, 32. 22 23

27

Chapter One

In many places of Assam Desh, all are familiar that how promiscuous activities are observed in some times of the year during Bihu. These bad customs are not found in any part of the world; this has become a big black stain on the face of Assam. Alas, have the people lost their all religious senses? Who would not be detested by seeing these bad activities of Bihu? That is why, the notables Assam, please try to stop this bad custom, you will definitely achieve success. O the people of Assam, it is already late, stand up and take up those good customs mentioned above and renounce the bad customs. It will be good for you both in this world and the other world.27

His focus on the environment of adultery as a general condition of the existing social landscape could be traced with the process of how Assam, or more accurately Kamrupa, was located in the larger South Asian narrative of the Nineteenth century. One of the major articulations of this narrative, as Bodhisattva Kar showed, was as the land of “forms of desire,” or as the “land of lust.” In this understanding, “the erotic excess and magical prowess of Assamese women” had become a commonplace idea in colonial India and particularly in colonial Bengal. Kar argues, ‘the colonial discursive regime fastened the forces of magic and immorality on the figure of the Assamese women.’28 However, such discursive affinity in the local context was articulated through the production of social class or more accurately, “lower class people”. Thus, Dakeal Phookun, the Calcutta-educated son of Haliram, urged the local notables to regulate the social evils through the repressive fixity of marriage rites. A metropolitan split between different notions of sensibilities was in order. However, in the strange logic of colonialism the discursive agency of the lower class male was more significant than the female despite their transgressing, immoral social affinity. Thus the idea of consenting elopement was rearticulated as the practice of abduction. Particularly in the 27

Ibid, 32 Bodhisattva Kar, “Incredible Stories in the Time of Credible Histories: Colonial Assam and Translation of Vernacular Geographies”, in Partha Chatterjee and Raziuddin Aquil (eds), History in the Vernacular (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2008), 303. 28

28

Chapter One

colonial administrative circle, instead of elopement, the practice of abduction gets more prominence. Such strange patriarchal affiliation produced Bihu in a completely different way. Representing this contrasting logic, in a detailed, scenic narrative of abduction, Major John Butler of the Bengal Native Infantry, described thus in his 1855 book: A not uncommon custom prevalent in Assam is to effect a marriage against the consent of parents. Every year in the month of April the Behoo festival takes place; this being kept up with music, dancing and rejoicing and lasting seven days, all classes are particularly fond of being present on this occasions. An unfortunate youth having failed to secure the consent of the parents of the girl he has selected to effect his object. He lies in wait in the road till the damsel passes by to the fair or festival with her female relatives, when, with the aid of his companions he carries her off, the feigning reluctant bride, and immediately marries her privately; when in a few days the parents are obliged to be reconciled and consent to a public marriage.29 Interestingly, as Butler mentions in the same book, during the Bihu season this feigning, reluctant bride would receive considerable freedom and did not “seem to be attended with any stain, blemish or loss of reputation.”30 In a Bakhtanian tone, unlike Robinson, at least, in theory Butler was separating the festive period from the everyday. Bakhtin argued, carnivals were “temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order.”31 Such temporary liberation might enable the womenfolk to receive “considerable freedom.” However, somewhat giving a more complicated picture of this “freedom,” Butler indicated a tension between the social prevalence of this claim and its 29

John Butler, Travels and Adventures in the Province of Assam, during a Residence of Fourteen Years (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1855), 226. 30 Ibid, 227. 31 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, Trans: Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington:Midland Book Edition, 1984) 10.

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contestation by the pre-colonial elite. Butler declared that the practice of abduction was a punishable offence in the pre- colonial world and the offending “youth” would receive, “forty strips with a leathern strap on his naked back.’ 32 Such articulation suggested that rather than a pristine site of cultural consensus, even in pre-colonial times Bihu was a veritable locus of social contestation. It also suggested that the liberating spirit of the festival as Bakhtin suggested needs to be complicated as in the specific context of Assam, the cultural consensus was mediated through different social contestations. However, what is interesting is that, in colonial time to see how the practices like elopement and abduction were constituted in terms of festive and every day time structures. Were the colonial officials convinced that this so-called annual exception was in fact reflective of a far more general laxity of marriage rules and martial ethics in Assam? But the indication of Bihu as an extension of everyday (in Robinson through invocation of “agrarian” discourses, Anundaram the adultery and elopement), suggested that in “barbaric” society-a festival could not be a time of exception and inversion. The already enumerated, recognisable “Hindu” festivals like Holi, Durga Puja might have certain affirmation of festival time but in festivals like Bihu was recognised only as the extension and intensification of the everyday manifestation of the “primitive” values. A discussion on the contemporary legal discourses of midnineteenth century Assam about marriage rules would further this colonial assumption about primitive values. The early nineteenth century legal discussion was particularly centred on this question of the social. The petitions on different personal matters continued to irritate the Judiciary in colonial Assam. Describing the problems of the overcrowded kutchery with purported petitioners in the early colonial administration, Major Adam White wrote in 1831 that

32

Butler, Travels and Adventures, 226-227.

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a man would complain about a dispute which his dead father had had, about a horse, or a cow, some 40 years ago. Accusations of the most serious nature, against individuals, were given in, altogether unfounded; and disappointed suitors often gave vent to their malice, in most offensive anonymous remarks, upon the amalah and the European authorities...33 It seemed rather ludicrous to White that an enlightened government would have to adjudicate on matters that were personal and social. The crisis in the structure of authority that British colonialism instituted – that state matters would have to be kept separate from social customs which in turn should be governed by appropriate traditions – was, however, acutely reflected in the flurry of marriage-related suits. However, to restrict this, “frivolous proceedings” a writer in the Calcutta Review, in 1853, suggested that the reason for this chaos was the policy of “no payments of stamps” which makes people “inclined to make formal complaints in courts about foolish and trivial causes.”34 The alternative was not very convincing, even Anundaram claimed, there was a particular networks at work between “ministerial officers of the courts” and the petitioners at large. Narrating such “sordid corruption” prevalent among the local court official and darogahs, he lamented, “Their love of gain often leads them equally to for sell justice for money, and to lend their cooperation in the preparation of injury and oppression on the poor and helpless.”35 The only alternative, responding to the general principle of non-intervention in the customs of the subject population in India, many colonial officers, including Anundaram, were suggesting a radical revision. Anundaram, by then one of the influential local members of the colonial administration, tried to make a serious connection between these practices and the pressure that the colonial judiciary had been facing, in his famous 1853 memorial to 33

Adam White, A Memoir of The Late David Scott (1831; Guwahati: DHAS, 1988) Anonymous, “Assam since the Expulsion of the Burmese,” Calcutta Review, No. 19 (1853), 413-439. 35 A. J. Moffat Mills, Report on the Province of Assam, Maheswar Neog, eds. (1853; Guwahati: Assam Publication Board, 1984.) 114. 34

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A. J. Moffatt Mills. In the final article of his memorandum, under the title of Registration of Marriage, he argued that in some districts “more than one fourth of the cases relate to the question of marriage” and the numbers of the cases are “often so great” that the courts had to dispose of them in summary way. Cases of elopement, seduction, and dispossession of wives, are of constant occurrence in the courts of the Province, and men fight for their wives in the same manner, as they do for their lands and goods. It is often impossible to decide between contending parties who among them have been legally married; the evidence adduced on both sides being equally conclusive in favour of the pretensions of oath. Generally men and women among the lower orders, live together as husbands and wives without ever undergoing the nuptial rites. Whenever either a charge of adultery or an action for the recovery of a wife is preferred, the complainant fails to make good his charge, either because he cannot, under conflicting evidence, prove his marriage, or because he omitted to perform the requisite nuptial ceremonies.36 Reiterating his 1848 suggestion, Dhekiyal Phukan urged the Government to start “a register of marriage at the Mofussil courts of each thannah jurisdiction, entitling every person to have their marriages entered in the register at a trifling cost.” 37 Anundaram’s suggestion of registration of marriage was nothing but an attempt to separate the question of social from state matters. In two particular domains, he wanted to separate the governmental world. The evangelical context of such isolation also based on the idea of erasing the women’s voice from the discourse of the social. Some kind of voice of women or at least, a certain kind of authority in the social was still prevalent, when Butler argued that the Bihu was claimed by “female sex as a period of considerable license.” Anandarm’s essay in Orunodoi was representative of how the question of women voice was erased and instead how the new English educated Assamese elite 36 37

Ibid, 132. Ibid.

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wanted to turn marriage into a matter of patriarchal authority over bride exchange rather than an issue of desire and pleasure. This new network between evangelical missionary discourse and its manifestation with the English educated Assamese elite circle did one thing particularly well, it particularize the patriarchal authority in every practices of “desire and pleasure.” Of course, this burden felt on Bihu tremendously. Along with the rhetoric of ‘licentious habits’ of the Assamese popular, it seems a discourse of debt, monetary desire was also coming together as a reading of such specificities of the peasantry in colonial discourse. John Butler, in his 1847 book, A Sketch of Assam, gives some descriptions of the marriage practices of Assam. Recognizing the contractual nature of marriage promises with English traditions, but the problem was, as he claimed, “yet in few countries, probably, will the number of violated contracts or promises of marriages be found to exceed those of Assam.” 37 But Butler confirmed that since there was no bhar bhete in “widow remarriage practices” among “poorer classes,” it was easier for a widow to become someone’s wife. He claimed “this condition of existence among the lower orders is almost common as marriage.” While since there was “no bar to the loose and immoral habits so prevalent among the poorer classes in Assam. The indulgence of these is further facilitated by the ease with which the marriage –tie may be disserved.”38 The only answer thus, as Mills in response to Anunadram in his final report suggested, was provisions of shorter period to take decisions in certain cases, “one year in cases of marriage and caste, in cases of non-fulfillment of engagement after betrothal to one year calculated from date of the betrothal attaining a marriageable age and to six months in cases to obtain or recover conjugal rights.”39 However, suggesting that the date could be known as the betrothal was celebrated through a “public festival,” while at the same time, to substantiate his suggestion to take six months duration to obtain or recover 37

John Butler, A Sketch of Assam with Some Accounts of Hill Tribes (London: Smith, Elden and Co, 1847), 141. Butler, Sketch of Assam, 142-3. 39 Mills, Report, 34. 38

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conjugal rights, he quoted Major Vetch, the Commissioner of Revenue in Assam: “It is no uncommon thing for a man to claim a woman for his wife after she has been absent from him for two years and had children by another man.” However, unlike Butler’s understanding of betrothal, Mills took it to be symptomatic of “practices of selling female relatives” and said, The practices of heads of families selling to the highest bidder the persons of their female relatives is unfortunately very prevalent in Assam, and many cases arise out of it; the effects of the custom are very demoralizing. To remedy this evil, it has been suggested to me to consider those contracts only legal and cognizable in our Courts that are made in writing. I do not think this to be necessary; it will be far more acceptable to the people to allow them to make their own arrangements.40

Despite such separation between the state and the social, the discursive entanglement itself had restricted the unbinding promise of Bihu to massive adjustments. But despite this so called non-interventionist policy, the local adjustment, banning of Bihu tolis on obscenity charges were common in nineteenth-century colonial administration.

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My

interview in Arjuntal Village of Pathori area of Nagaon district confirmed of such administrative practices where a flourishing Bihu toli was disbanded because of obscenity charges. The memory of the villagers still operates as the exotic tale of the colonial intervention in collective life.42 There are ample collective memories of such banning in the Nagaon district alone, particularly in the adjacent areas of Nagaon town.43 A collective memory

40

Ibid. Interview with Muktiar Family of Arjuntal Village. Their ancestral kathoni (jungle) had been used as a Bihu toli until the colonial administration restricted it on the charges of obscenity. Interview with Prafulla Muktiar, Kamal Muktiar, Bhadrakanta Muktiar, 16.1.2016. 42 Interview with Dulal Bora, Puronigudam, Nagaon, 15.1.2016. 43 “Reader, you must have heard about the spectacular observance of Bihu practices in Nagaon. In between Puronigudam and Khagorijan, there are two places on the banks of the Kollong, called Ragdiya and Potiyaboliya. The young men and women gather and perform by playing dhul3 and toka3. These places were very popular in the 41

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of people in the neighbourhood of Nagaon town still operates as symbol of interaction of the popular with the colonial administration. As the story goes, Ananda Das of Haluagaon, who worked as a clerk in the Nagaon court, got to know that the colonial administration was considering the banning of Bihu in Assam. He immediately came home and organized a meeting with the villagers and decided that a group would march to Guwahati and meet the colonial administrative head of Assam and would try to convince him about the decency of Bihu and its importance in their lives. Maimot Titinga, a legendary dhulia of the area and his sister Chenimai also a famous nachani led the group and convinced Borsahib that Bihu was not an indecent or obscene festival, where even a brother and sister could perform side by side. Accordingly, the Borsahib was convinced and removed the administrative restriction on Bihu.44It is difficult to ascertain the exact date of these tales. But the collective memories of banning Bihu tolis on obscenity charges, practices of negotiation between popular and the state have confirmed the validity of colonial intervention in the local, particular context. But this collective memory, particularly the idea that siblings could participate in the same Bihu performance confirmed about an emerging discourse that Bihu was not just a ritual of courtship, was also getting a discursive affinity. The existing archive also supports this Ratneshwar Mahanta, invoked this mismatched mediation between courtship songs and siblings in his 1886 essay, published in Asam Bandhu, a nineteenth-century vernacular journal. ` Our civilized brothers, by playing Dhol, help their sisters’ dance and our people think it is a good custom. They even allow the obscene act of singing by the sister in front of her bother. In the full presence of the

earlier times, even people all the way from Guwahati’s Gorgaon used to come to watch them.” Goonabhiram Barooa, “Saumar Yatra”, Jonaki, 2:7 (1890),190. 44 Bhadra kanta Bora, Bihur Trankorta Moimot Tatinga (Nagaon: Sadau Nagaon Rangali Bihu Urua Utsavar Samarak Grantha, 2006), 123-4.

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public, in the Bihu-hata,45 when girls with obscene gestures danced, many of the boys from the bhadra-household would wish to watch them. But that is not the case among the uncivilized Garo. Their Bihu rituals are civilized and that is why much better than our uncivilized, sinful Bihu.46 The comparison with the “savage” Garo was certainly intended as a narrative ploy of shaming the “civilized” Assamese. Much more interesting is Mahanta’s insinuation at incest. Instead of confirming the innocence of Bihu performance at Bihu hata, he was invoking the mismatch, somewhat obscene mediation between brothers and sisters. It was not just Bihu hata where Bihu was performed; Mahanta was indicating a performance inside the familial domain. Probably alluring to Huchori performance, he was invoking the question of incest into it. The holiday politics of early colonial time still awaits its historians. Unfortunately, when Bihu was first declared as holiday could not be traced. But we suspect, the declaration of one day holiday on Bihu or Bhaisak Bihu in Assam proper in 1872 in the newly established province of Assam produced a discursive shift in understanding its obscenity assemblage. In the context of relatively increasing numbers of vernacular newspapers, journals Bihu got attention as an important festival of Assam. Small introductory essays, editorials on Bihu, and its importance as a festival of Assam had started to be published. Hem Chandra Barua, the celebrated compiler of Hemkosha, detailing the rituals of three Bihus wrote a piece in Assam news in 1882. Narrating the festive observance of Bihu, he wrote: What is Bihu? In our Assam Bihu is a very cheerful occasion. From toddlers to old men, from kings to beggars, every one becomes excited on this occasion. Everyone merrily meets each other, has fun and with a humble heart eats with each other sitting together. The poorest of the poor preserves some rice for this “Bihu hata” is basically the place where the Bihu is observed socially. In colloquial Assamese ‘hata’ stands for a weekly market or fairs. 46 Ratneshwar Mahanta, “Garo Britanta,” Asam Bandhu, 2: 3-4 (1886), 528-9. 45

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occasion; the beggars also save rice for this occasion so that he can eat with his family…47

But despite the pervasive presence, on the seventh day of Bohag Bihu, as Barua claimed, “keeping aside shame following disgusting and reprehensible customs prevalent since ages, they bid farewell to the Bohag Bihu performing peculiar dance instead of obscene gestures.”48 Of course, there was a difference in enumeration of customs and rituals of Bihu performances; there was still no standardization of Bihu rituals. The obscenity assemblage was still its commensurable point. But there was a distinguish difference in emphasis. To displace its obscenity assemblage different vernacular elites took different strategies. Bolinarayan Bora in his essay in 1885 in Asam Bondhu, shifting from the narrative of obscenity, he tried to articulate other social rituals attached to Bihu such as washing clothes, cleaning the house, the practice of visiting family and friends, offering prayers in the namghars and showing obeisance to parents and elders, Bora situated Bihu within the context of ‘Bharatavarsha.’ Forgetting the beauty of the heaven, even God came down to the earth and danced and sang with dust and water. Surely, People could not ignore such display of spectacle. Lovers love, Bhakti for God emerged. In Bharatavarsha everywhere this is seen. Somewhere it is Holi, somewhere Kartik puja, somewhere Madan catudarshi. In a general situation what is regarded as obscene, here for the time being, allowed.49 His allegorical connection between God and the Holi festival, the separation between everyday and festive period were new discursive affinity that articulated Bihu’s new significance within the structure of festival time. This also confirmed by Goonabhiram’s50 new position over Bihu. In his essay named “Agar Din Etiar Din,”

Hem Chandra Barua, “Bihu,” (1882, reproduced in Avahan, 4:7 (1933), 830. Ibid, 830. 49 Bolinaryan Bora, “Bihu,” Asam Bandhu, 1:5(1885), 152. 50 Goonabhiram Barooa in his Assam Buranji narrated Bihu as obscene festival, but probably within the context of growing civil Society demand on regulation of obscene and rustic, particularly in the festive rituals like Holi etc, in the footnote, he tried to refute Assam monopoly over obscene. He wrote, ‘by seeing this, one may have a bad 47 48

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published during 1885-6 in Asam Bondhu, he pointed out that “the quality of a man or a nation can be understood only from the nature of their recreations.” and since he claimed, “most of our people’s livelihood is related to Agriculture, our sports and amusements are also related to that life.”51 Enumerating different recreational activities, including sports and festivals, finally, in the piece, he declared that the ‘Maghar Bihu’ and the ‘Sotor Bihu’ were the main recreations of Assam.52 This new discursive understanding of Bihu emphasising the specificity of festival time, was now confirmed in the official discourses. More importantly, instead of understanding elopement as an extension of the everyday, official gazetteers confirmed the acceleration of elopement cases in the courts at this period of time. Making a direct connection between Bihu performances and elopement cases in the local courts in 1905, B. C Allen in his note in the District Gazetteer of Nowgong claimed that, “runaway matches are most common, and during the next few weeks the outraged but avaricious parent complaining of the abduction of his daughter is by no means an uncommon sight in the local courts.”53 The imperial gazetteers 1908 giving a rational understanding of abduction and elopement claimed, “This festival not unfrequently gives rise to suits for abduction against lovers who have induced the object of their affection to elope with them, instead of paying the usual bride price to the parents of the girl.” 54 The section traced how an evangelical understanding of the practice of elopement and abduction constituted the obscene in the nineteenth century social of Assam proper. The invocation of familial values, the significance of marriage as an extension of the familial

impression on the people of this land. But it has a resemblance to Hindustan’s Holi festival or Kartik puja of some places of Bengal or Khamti dance known to the honourable people.’ Goonabhiram Barooa, Assam Buranji, (1884,Guwahati: Assam Prakashan Parisod, 2000) )162. For a good discussion on colonial regulation over obscene, and particularly how the vernacular public demand on obscene led to enact certain regulation on obscenity in India, see, Deana Heath, Purifying Empire: Obscenity and the Politics of Moral Regulation in Britain, Australia and India (New York: Cambridge University press, 2010)167. 51 Goonabhiram Barooa, “Agar Din Eatiar Din,” Asam Bondhu, 2: 3-4(1886), 505-506. 52 Ibid, 509. 53 B. C. Allen, Assam District Gazetteers (Calcutta: The City Press, 1905) 102. 54 The Imperial Gazetteers of India, provincial Series, Vol: 14(Calcutta: Government Printing Press, 1908) 59.

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norms helped consolidating the patriarchal power. This means instead of stressing on the ideas of desire and pleasure, this new enactment criminalised the practices of the lower classes. And such consolidation, also erased the women’s voices, particularly from the discursive arena. Here the category of obscene was not determined by any direct physical, sexual terms, but any violation of the familial norms actually constituted the obscene in the nineteenth century discourse of colonial modernity. We submit that instead of a-priori biography, obscene was constituted through the complicated networks of discursive and material production.

NATIONALIST PREDICAMENTS

Puja has passed away. Deorgonya dancing girls have set Nowgong on fire this year. From the sucking babies to the hoary-headed, everyone has been infatuated with them – some has turned rather mad after them. I am ashamed to bring to your notice that some educated gentlemen of high families showed such signs of degradation in morality and deterioration of our society that the occasion in which they were present with these girls has been a topic of conversation everywhere in the town. The girls are turning as if in a steam-engine – they have not a single moment’s leisure at their lodging. Here one is taken away … [words missing in the original] … there another is seen in the bosom of enamored adult. I am afraid they will [words missing] … to venereal diseases …55

Thus wrote an agitated Ratneshwar Mahanta to his friend Hemchandra Goswami in Calcutta on 24 October 1888. While Goswami’s response is not available today, it is apparent from the passionate tone of this letter that in the minds of the Englisheducated members of the Assamese middle class, it was no doubt that it was essential to 55

Ratneshwar Mahanta, Ratneshwar Mahanta Rachanavli, ed: Jogendra Narayan Bhuyan (Guwahati: Assam Publication Board, 1977)348.

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rescue the nation and its citizens from the imagery of contamination. The politics of disciplining and regulating, and most importantly, the invention of the obscene would soon become the new pastime for the Assamese dangoriyas. The metropolitan fantasy of inculcating wisdom in the “dark province of Assam” as the Jonaki’s first editorial 56 declared in 1888, was obviously not an innocent act, unaccompanied by a clamour to reconfigure the morals of the popular. However, there was a distinct shift in terms of understanding the social. Instead of the question of “family values” that the earlier colonial officials, Baptist missionaries and the local elites so passionately engaged in, now the Calcutta based Assamese language warriors were interested in the question of language and performance. In different “traditional” performances, emerging new repertoire of Assamese literature, the discourse of obscenity was a constant thematic presence. However, interestingly, the discursive connection between performance, language and their particular relationship with Bihu and its obscenity appendage was dully connected and discussed. However, at least, initially, the performance was not articulated in terms of Bihu dance as such but the structure of festival ethics, its multilayered “carnival idioms”57 were articulated as the basis of engagement. Mahnata’s agitated articulation of obscene production in the performance of “Deorgonya dancing girls” was basically directed against such “festival idioms.” In emerging nationalist dictum of discipline, the festival needed to be reduced in accordance with this new fantasy. Mahanta, invoking similarities between Bihu and bhaona, the Vaisnavite performative genre, said to be the invention of Sankardeva, the fifteenth century Vaisnavite preacher, tried to regulate the conduct of the popular.

58

Accepting its formal possibilities for

disseminating the strategies of the national, Mahanta, however, rejected the specificity Chandra Kumar Agarwala, “Atmakatha” Jonaki, 1:1(1888), 4. Cf. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, Trans: Helene Iswolsky, (Bloomington: Midland Book Edition, 1984). 58 Ratneshwar Mahanta, “Bhaona,” Jonaki, 1:6(1889). 46-47. 56 57

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of its formal-thematic structure, including the Brajabuli language as the mode of expression. He said, “One will speak in ‘bankara-binkri’ Brajabuli language, another will interpret - this is a practice of rustic people that does not have the real flavour of act and plot.”59 The alternative was a modern Assamese language and production of bhaona in the proscenium structure. The significance of proscenium was not just its aesthetic realism but a formal apparatus that could regulate the conduct of the popular. Instead of bhaona’s somewhat open performance without much of a strict separation between performer and audience60 Mhanta was arguing for a proscenium etiquette within it. The reason for such new structure was, as we will see, that it would help regulate the conduct of the audience. Because there was a similarities between the idioms of bhaona night with the idioms of Bihu tolis. Mahanta claimed, The young boys, without the knowledge of their parents, would go to Bhaona only to flirt with neighbourhood girls. The young girls would also go for the same purpose. They would give thuria-tamul to handsome boys. The cases of elopement in kachari are so overwhelming that anyone who has little knowledge of the proceedings knows it. It is indeed strange that from a long distance, carrying little children on their backs, the young girls march to the Bhaona just to have some chit-chat in the wee hours of the night. We do not want to blame the young men as they usually become reckless at this stage. But the young ladies to whom submissiveness, shyness are regarded as the embellishment of their character; seeing this we are appalled and sad.61 Claiming that the original aim of Bhaona was to invoke devotion in the minds of the audience, he declared that it had slipped from its original objective. To demonstrate women’s ineluctable decline in moral character because of this degraded performance, Mahanta, “Bhaona,” Jonaki, 2:1(1889)135. Maheswar Neog, Bhaona: The Ritual Play of Assam (New Delhi: Sangeet Natak Akademi, 1952), 9. 61 Mahanta, “Bhaona,” Jonaki, 2:3 (1889), 144-145. 59 60

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he also placed the Bohuwa, a character that used to appear to produce laughter though not often thematically connected with the so-called plot line, as the epitome of obscene. He claimed, They are (the young women) not satisfied with the songs and music of the Bhaona. Actually, the songs and music of the Bhaona are impertinent for them. They used to ask each other or enquire with a neighbour of an actor who is supposed to perform that day-‘is there any Bohuwa character in the Bhaona’ or if yes, then when he will appear - without watching the licentious dance and songs of the Bohuwa, they do not get the real pleasure...I do not understand how a daughter before her mother, a son before his father, sister before her brother watches such licentious activities62

It seemed that the high-spirited, daunting young women almost intimidated the fate of an emerging nation. The only way out as Mahanta seemed to believe was communitybased, village-level surveillance. Connecting the conduct of the audience with Bihu, he suggested, ‘the bhadraluka who used to get invitations for Bhaona could change the prevailing practices of making it a Bihu-hata.’63 A separate sitting arrangement for men and women was suggested and the organisers were asked to maintain strict surveillance so that no one could transpose that arrangement. He declared, “We have heard that in some places elopement happened, sometimes even a group steals women. Organisers knew about it but did not act. The organisers of the Namghar should be made responsible or fined, if such things occur during the Bhaona night.”64 However, if the conduct of the Bhaona audience threatened an emerging nation, the influence of the newly emerging performative genres like “Hindusthani” or “Bengali Muisic” was no less imperilling to that nation. However, there was a specific side to this articulation. The lexical arrangement, particular wording etc were seen as grossly

62

Ibid, 145. Ibid. 64 Ibid, 146. 63

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obscene rather than the music itself. We will see, the unresolved tension within the nationalist publicist was that on the one hand, they would recognise the utility of the genres in the strategies of the nation; while at the same time, anxious about the particularities of their lexical arrangements. The only way out was then the “Hindusthani or Bengali” music in Assamese language. So instead of a specifically “Assamese Music”, the idea was to produce these genre in the Assamese language. This late nineteenth century strategy, of course, had to change in the early twentieth century, but this emphasis on the language had a serious discursive effect over Bihu practices. We will come to that soon. Lambodar Bora, then a lawyer in Tezpur, wrote a piece on music in Jonaki in 1889. Bora, like Mahanta, found a similarity between Bihu and many of these songs and termed them as ‘Bihu’s babu edition.’ However, recognizing the potentiality of music in production of “selfless” Assamese subject, declared that “In the life of sadness and melancholy, the music is the river of bliss, in the life of happiness and fulfillment too, the music is the river of delight.”65 Making somewhat a utilitarian connection, he claimed that Assamese past was more interesting than the “lifeless, sordid present” due to the lack of the consumption of “poetic sensibilities.” This distorted connection between poetic sensibilities and Assamese subject, Bora claimed, made the Assamese life extremely self-centric.66 Obviously, the self-centric Assamese was not the desired quality of the citizen of an emerging nation as without a distinctive community metaphor, how can a nation survive? He claimed, “Helping others, sacrifice for the larger emancipation of the world is nowhere to be seen in life. Only the interest and development of the self, happiness for the self, interest only for the earthly life etc has become the main concern of the Assamese.” 67 Emphasizing Music’s importance in the life of a nation or its subject, he declared that the fulfilled, happy citizens of a nation can liberate themselves from the shackles of the everyday clamor and transform the Lambodhar Bora, “Gaan,” Jonaki, 1:10 (1889), 87. Bora, “Gaan,” 88. 67 Ibid, 88. 65 66

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dull, somewhat sordid existence in the interest of the nation through Music. He argued that Music could help in everyday exercise of emotions. Instead of eliminating them under different pressure, “the emotions like kindness, affections, devotion, honesty, anger, courage, sympathy, and pride should be practiced in a way that when the time comes they awake like a fire in the mind.” Describing specific instances, he said that “seeing the sufferings of the poor the sympathy should come to my mind, seeing the sufferings of a widow I should be crying…”’ When most of the emotions die in one’s mind, Bora argued, the individual would also live like a dying man: “When honesty dies in one’s mind, he becomes a creature. Nobody can stop him from doing bad things.” Poetry is important for the practice of emotions but the impact of music is more powerful, Bora claimed, as it can keep emotions alive in the mind—it could melt the mind like nothing else can. Thus for the emerging Assamese nation, music was the weapon of the hour, a strategy that can be a manifestation of the community in a more concrete way. He explained it specifically, By seeing the sufferings of widows, if you want to propagate for widow remarriage…what you can do is to write some lyrics describing the sufferings, sadness, pain of the widows by exposing the inconsiderate, insensible, rudeness, superstitions of the Hindu society, then you will see the power of music. If you want to teach the world about the pure love between married couple, one should write some lyrics on this….If you want to teach Assamese about the patriotism, then you should write, as the Bengali has done, a book on the national anthem (jatiya sangit). Then the Assamese will give up self interest, they will cry for their own nation68

But Bora’s nation was also contaminated by music. The contemporary Bengali and Hindustani music, as he put it, were “Bihu’s babu edition”—a similar, middle-class edition of obscene Bihu songs. That is why he claimed that singing was traditionally

68

Ibid, 89.

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prohibited in front of respectable people and the places where women could listen. The problem was that there was no “Hindustani” and “Bengali music in the Assamese language” and thus to fulfill the thirst of the music the young minds sung those songs. Urging parents and teachers to be careful so that the children could not hear these songs, he suggested “creating music” for the Assamese. For this reason, he proposed that in Assamese language a book of lyrics should be written. He asked all the good writers of Assam to contribute their lyrics for it. “The language should be simple Assamese and sensibility should be pure.” There should not be any “bad sensibility, obscenity” and instead “pristine love, devotion for God, thought for the motherland, social reform, manners, morality etc essential subjects and on different rasas, music should be written.”69 Emphasizing a serious, collective effort, he suggested that “one or more persons should edit the language and music and publish with their own expenses or taking debt from others, and they would make a way for selling and returning the debt.” Suggesting publishing many volumes in subject sequel, however, he also emphasized that the price should be cheap, so that everyone could buy them. Invoking the distinct commonality of Music between communities of India, he argued for somewhat a standardize Indian music and suggested that when it was written in Assamese, “these lyrics should be written in Hindustani, Bengali etc foreign music, although if some writers wish they can write in Assamese music too.” 70 Bora’s magnanimity was not misplaced. He was not thinking about a specific genre as such but the question of language was more significant than a national genre. Bora’s strategy was soon to be realized by a group of students from Tezpur who published in 1891, Dharma Sangeet, with some corrections and suggestions from Laksminath Bezbaroa, the then editor of the Jonaki. 71 Reflecting Bora’s tone, in the preface the authors wrote that the music had “infinite power” and claimed that, “Thousands of warriors with sword 69

Ibid, 90. Ibid, 90. 71 A Group of Students, Dharma Sangeet (Tezpur: Saratchandra Chakrabarty, 1891), iii. 70

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and arrows cannot change the mind of a person but music can.” Claiming that without having any “tradition of Music” a nation could be regarded as dead, it emphasized that how an “honest music can take a person to an enormous height.” To intensify the Dharmabhaba (morality) in the minds of people is the main objective of this book. …for use of all secular music is given here…some of the best known authors of our times ‘music’ are given after taking their consent. Some best ‘Brahma Sangeet’ of the Bengali language is translated here. Here Hindi, Bengali and some Assamese music are given. For the lack of knowledge on Assamese music, Assamese music is very small here. The authors apologized for that. If People respond, in the second edition of the book, the authors will try to bring more Assamese music in the book72

The book has different musical forms with reference to the particular raga, taal etc at the top of the songs. However, it is very difficult to gather how the authors came to recognize these songs as essentially Assamese. Was it the specific music, genre or the language that identified these “Assamese Music?” But like Bora, the authors were also interested on the strategy that instead of constitution of a formal national genre, the expressive possibility of the language is much more significant. Naturally, Jonaki welcomed such a project. Criticizing the mismatching of certain “music”, it congratulate the authors that, “It gives eminent pleasure to us. …. total 141 songs, most have their problems with metre …But we shall not forget that it was the first attempt of the students….”73 A more collective and systematic effort took place under the leadership of musician Lakhiram Barua where, as Lombodhar Bora suggested, almost all the prominent Assamese writers wrote lyrics on different bhabas and Barua finally embellished them with the music. Initially started in Jonaki, then moved to Usha, more prominently, the Tezpur journal edited by Padmanath Gohain Barua, these “Assamese songs” tried to express multiple emotions for the nation. Published as Sangeet Kosh in 72 73

Ibid, i-ii. “Kakatar Gunagun Bisar,”Jonaki, 4:3 (1891), 469.

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1909,74 these songs were compiled as an anthology with instructions for ragas and taals at the top of every song, Barua distributed them into six different sensibilities. jatiya sangeet (national or social), dharma sangeet (songs on religion and morality), soka sangeet (sadness and melancholy), praynoy sangeet (on love) rohosya sangeet (on laughter), bibaha sangeet (marriage and conjugal relationship) and finally, puroni sangeet (old music). However, in the puroni sangeet category he compiles some of the local folk music genres, like biyanama, borgeet and some verses from the Namaghosa, written by Madhabadeva, the medieval Vaishnavite preacher of Assam. These middle-class sensibilities, on bhava and the Assamese language, were soon to be connected in a more authentic trajectory with questions about local, authentic cultural tropes of the Assamese nation. We will come to that soon. Just after the completion of Laksminath Bezbaroa’s Podum Kuwari, a novel based on a historical snippet of mediaeval Assam, in Jonaki in 1891, Lambodar Bora wrote a general critique of the novel in the same journal, titled “Uponyas aru Atmohotya” (The Novel and Suicide). Though he agreed that the novel genre helped in building up human character, he suggested purging certain novels as they encouraged people “to make terrible mistakes in life and sometime influenced them to kill themselves” 75 Criticising those novels, particularly the existing overwhelming narrative of suicide of the protagonists in these novels, he claimed, Some third-class novelists are good at killing people. For instance, say in the novel a certain hero’s lover died, so now the hero has to kill himself. A certain heroine’s imagined husband does not love her, now she will have to kill herself. A certain person could not realize a certain ambition, so now kills himself. A certain beautiful girl has two lovers, now the novelist has to kill one! A certain handsome man has been rejected by a beauty, so let’s take his life. By reading

74 75

Lakiram Barua, Sangeet Kosha, eds: Nagen Saikia (1909, Jorhat: Assam Sahitya Sabha, 1986) Lambodar Bora, ‘Uponyas Aru Atmahotya’, Jonaki, 4:3(1891) 452.

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these kinds of killings the immature readers learn to kill themselves or kill others…76

Claiming Mahabharata and Ramayana’s influence in Indian “Hindu households,” he argued that characters like Rama and Yudhisthir, Sita and Sabitri were the epitome of the Hindu dharma and its principles and thus these “high moral qualities” should be communicated through the Assamese novel. However, Bezbaroa in his editorial capacity, through numerous editorial comments on the article, refuted almost all of his suggestions. Instead he argued that, “listening to a laundry man, Rama abandoned his wife in forest and Yudhisthira put a bet on his wife in gambling....In fact, rather than upholding any platonic ideal, the poets of these classics sketch their protagonist with each of human qualities.”77 Asking Bora to provide some statistical data on his analogy between the novel and suicide, Bezbaroa declared, “There are thousands of those novels circulating in Europe, if we were to agree with the author then, there should not have been one person left in there. Everybody should have killed themselves by now.” 78 Bezbaroa was articulating something very different. Instead of a black and white understanding of human, he was trying for a more complicated understanding of the human character, complicacy of realities and in that context the realisation of morality. But such complicacy was also symptomatic of an emerging shift in understanding the moral locus of the popular. Instead of having a blanket understanding of Bihu as the symbol of obscene, the possibilities of a departure, a re-articulation had become increasingly possible at this point of time. At that time, Assamese language nationalism, particularly the Jonaki brigade, was debating the viability of the Assamese language in expressing different rasas, the authenticity, lexical specificity of Assamese language etc. The new mapping of neo-Vaishnavite repository, Sankardeva’s dramas and other oeuvre, developed a new kind of awareness about Bihu. In fact, an obscenity spat in Bora, “Upaniyas,” 454. Laksminath Bezboroa, “Editorial Comment,” Jonaki, 4:3(1891) 454. 78 Bezboroa, “Editorial”,454. 76 77

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Jonaki group, which eventually compelled Benudhar Rajkhowa, Padmanath Gohain Barooh etc to start a new journal called Bijuli from the same metropolitan location, was indicative of the growing difference on Bihu or understanding of the popular. DekaGavaru, a satirical play, written by Benudhar Rajkhowa and Padmanath Gohain Barooh was criticized on obscenity charges in Jonaki by someone under the name of ‘Xamaluchak’. When a response was made under another name ‘Niyaiporiyan’, Bezbaroa, then editor of the journal, took sides with ‘Xamaluchak’, and declared, we simply indicated the page numbers and numbers of the sentence rows …if we had printed the sentences then we will have to do away with our shame… Your argument is that the Bihu songs in the Deka Gavharu are good or not obscene. But if you read Xamaluchak then you will see he argued that the Bihu songs were one of the obscenities of the text, for example –‘aru bihu namare purno.’[The text is also filled with Bihunamas]…. You have lots of interest in Bihu nama, however Sri Xamaluchak does not like them at all, in the midst of all these the victim is the poor editor!79

This debate registers some interesting shifts in the idea of obscenity and the discourse of regulation in nationalist politics. One can gather that by questioning the existing idea of obscenity, the discourse of rusticity and for that matter Bihu namas, Rajkhowa and Gohain Barua was envisaging a different regulatory politics. The drama could not be traced; otherwise it would have been interesting to look at the shift in the lexical politics. Kamalakanta Bhatachraya in Jonaki, in his serialised article “Asomor Unnati” relegated this tension and urged the “young literati” to abandon their project as Bihu songs might prompt “chaste women” to indulge in promiscuous activities. Instead of Bihu, his strategy was to replace it with songs that would “fill the nation with patriotism.”’80 Instead of Bihu, he argued, “this debauchery should pave the way for

79 80

Bezbaroa, ‘Deka Gabhru Lekharu Dolor Prati,” Jonaki, 2:12(1890),230-231. Kamalakanta Bhatacharaya, “Assomar Unnati,” Jonaki, 2:3(1888), 143.

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hero-worshipping, to plant a new hope in Assam. Sing us the eulogies of heroes!” 81 Claiming how the colonial policy of non-interference actually complicated the issue of obscenity in Assam, he argued for a new nationalist strategy in a colonial condition. Kamalakanta lamented, When Assam was free Bihu could not do anything bad. As in those days society was intricately tight and the state was also very concerned. If something happens between a boy and girl, society and the state gave enough attention to it and used to do immediately what they needed to do. That is why in those days Bihu was an innocent fun festival. But now under the English government Bihu lost all its glory as now everybody has the freedom of whatever they want to do. Moreover, due to the coming of native outsiders, now, day by day Bihu becomes a rituals of very harmful activities. O the educated brothers, by replacing Bihu with a useful game, please try to help remove Bihu from Assam.82

However, since the epitome of modernity the English, also had that kind of “game”— Bhattacharya was here referring to the discourse that claimed that Bihu’s vulgarity had a similar connotation with English “game”—he tried to convince his reader that, “may be the English too have such a game, but it is certainly not ugly like Bihu.” He tried to convince that, “like high court proceedings of a case,” nobody should argue in a manner “accept our ugly elements by arguing that English or other nationalities also have that kind of elements.” Instead, he suggested, “Take everything good from other nationalities but throw away their bad.”83 Such argument of structure of universality, the metropolitan ecstasy was now the new structural preamble on which Bihu was discussed and debated. However, in his 1894 novel Miri Jiyori, Rajani Kanta Bordoloi envisaged a different strategy altogether. In a time when the language, the phrases were supposed to be the main area of significance

Kamalakanta Bhatachrya, “Asomar,” Jonaki, 143. Kamalakanta , “Asamor,”144. 83 Kamalakanta , “Asamor,”144. 81 82

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than the rituals or performative practices, he extensively reproduced Bihu songs in the novel. He narrated the tragic story of a couple of the plains’ Miri community on the bank of the Subansiri in Lakhimpur district, and situated Bihu and Bihu songs within that serene, somewhat innocent landscape. It was for the first time, with a serious ethnographic detailing, the pristine site of performance was developed in the novel. Bordoloi’s work with E.A. Gait, the author of first academic history on Assam, particularly in search of different local practices, local legends etc honed his ethnographic readability. And such ethnographic reliability now constituted Bihu in a very different light. Bordoloi, instead of trying earlier fantasy of textualisation and literization, focused on the question of performance, with detailing and connecting one aspect of performance to another, in an attempt to rationalize different connection between Bihu and community. A new ‘Festival idiom” was imminent from this new connection between festival and community. Today is the first day of Bohag Bihu. People of all the classes of society, high and low alike, have made themselves merry. There has been much feasting in every household. Forgetting all the stress and strain and discord of the year gone by, people have celebrated Bihu with gaiety and abandon. They have given a welcoming cry to each other. Friends have met, and the young have shown due respect to their elders who, in turn, have blessed them to live in peace and happiness all the year ahead. The young, in groups, have abandoned themselves to fun and frolic. Women of respectable families have joined over a group of cowries. Here and there a few young men also have joined in the game with the ladies. At one place, a mother and her son have taken their position to play the game as rivals...84

Such description of the festive occasions continued when in the evening, “Young Miris from the nearby areas arrived at the town” and performed Bihu in the households. 84

Rajanikanta Bordoloi, Miri Jiyori - A Love Story, trans. P Kotoky (1894, Guwahati: Spectrum Publication, 2000),

6.

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Describing the performance itself, he wrote detailing the ‘beating of cymbals, singing of tuneful melodies and dancing by young maidens.” Then the group began to move in circle and the “drummers vied with one another in showing their skill at drum-beating, now by the right hand, now by left and then by both hands together.”85 This detail, step by step description of today’s huchori, ended with another description of Bihu performance: Instantly, the drummers and the pipers separated themselves from the group. The young women stood in a line. Then the girl started: Plump are the fern that grow on the bank of the Ranga river/ Growing four fingers’ width a day/ And plump are our lovely damsels like champa flowers/who can resist looking at them?86

The description continued when “the girls were ready.” And the “young man blew his pipe.” “The trio began to dance to the accompaniment of the tuneful pipes. Their gaiety and abandon in singing and dancing gave you the illusion of two heavenly nymphs descending on earth with Chitraratha, the King of the gandharvas.”87 However, such spectacular evidence of Bihu performance, turned into a solitary, individuated, part of the expressive structure of everyday communication when Bordoloi continued with Bihu songs in different social chorus of the life of his two protagonists. Such visible presence of the Bihu couplet particularised Bihu’s universal serenity along with its significance in the social life of a community. Making a relation between the tradition of bride price and unbinding love, his tragic story ended with the death of the innocent lovers. Instead of the obscene metaphor of Bihu, with a new understanding of lower class, particularly the “rustic” tribal community, Bihu was situated within the sordid context of heavy tradition and the unbinding promise of love. This ethnographic detailing on the performance or somewhat new structuring of “festival idioms” was 85

Ibid, 7. Ibid, 8. 87 Ibid, 8. 86

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also taken by none other than Goonabhiram Barooa. In his travelogue sequel of Saumar upper Assam in Jonaki 1890, Barooa—whose strange journey with Bihu first saw it as an obscene festival then as a festival of the Assamese in the last part of the century— referred to two popular Bihu tolis in Nagaon district. Reader, you must have heard about the spectacular observance of Bihu practices in Nagaon. In between Puronigudam and Khagorijan, there are two places on the banks of the Kollong, called Ragdiya and Potiyaboliya. The young men and women gather and perform by playing dhul88 and toka89. These places were very popular in the earlier times, even people all the way from Guwahati’s Gorgaon used to come to watch them.90

In his emphasis on the touristic pleasure one could trace the obvious significance of the exotic in an attempt to nationalise the local. But such new shift with the emerging ideas of tourism, holidaying was also parallel to the emerging tension on the question of the figure of “gaoliya.”4 It was now time to decide whether that “gaoliya” figure was symbol of veracity of Assamese nation or the rustic appendage of that nation. We will discuss trace this anxiety in the next section.

GAOLIYA: THE VULGAR AND THE AUTHENTIC

In 1914, Benudhar Rajkhowa opened his small tract on Bihu with the statement that “Assam is a very ancient place of the Aryans”.91 Refusing to accept the conventional argument of delayed inauguration of this land by the Aryans, he confirmed to his 88

A kind of drum essential to Bihu performance. Made from bamboo, also very important musical instrument of Bihu performance. 90 Goonabhiram Barooa “Saumar Yatra”, Jonaki, 2:7 (1890) saun,190. 4 See Bodhisattva Kar, “‘Tongue Has No Bone’: Fixing the Assamese Language, c. 1800 – c. 1930’, Studies in History 24: 1 (2008), pp. 27-76 for a discussion on the Assam linguistic nationalism’s complex relationship with the figure of the Gaoliya. 91 Benudhar Rajkhowa, Bihu (Dibrugarh: Self Publish, 1914)i. 89

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readers that the actual Aryan settlement had begun in Bengal much later, at least long after the inhabitation of Aryans in the land of Assam. Of course, Rajkhowa was invested in the contemporary politics which envisaged the frontier as a proper place in the authentic tradition of the Indian nation. However, there was a difference in emphasis. For Rajkhowa and many of his colleagues, it was also a response to the large-scale immigration of East Bengali peasants. “With their superior techniques of cultivation,” as historian Amalendu Guha put it, they “taught Assam how to grow jute, mung (a kind of pulse) and several other crops.”92 Guha also referred to the increase of the cultivation of jute to show the agricultural repute of these peasants, “from less than 30,000 acres in 1905-06,” it had increased “to more than 1,006,000 acres in 1919-20.”93 Amidst the perception of this imminent threat from the immigrant peasants, the Assamese nation needed a new discursive shift in understanding the rustic. Rajkhowa displaced it by inscribing Bihu within the everyday practices of Aryan sociality, supposed to be the impeccable agriculturalist and epitome of the modernity in south Asia. Thus, in no time, the rustic gaoliyas of Assam emerged as the authentic descendants of the great, pristine Aryans. Elaborating on the connection between Bihu and the agricultural practices of the Aryans, Rajkhowa argued, The main occupation of the Aryans was agriculture. This was the basis of their social bonding. Bihu was the festival related to their agriculture practices. The Aryans were doing the farming very happily and simultaneously they also praised God, the supreme owner of their framings, through music. When they started to cultivate the fields, the year emerged along with it. With religious obeisance in the heart, they were ready to plough the world. With the paste of mah and turmeric they washed their cattle. With the ropes of the tora plant, they tethered the cows and gave them rice cakes to eat. The cattle shed was fumigated with burning plants—that means a yajya ceremony was performed in obeisance 92 93

Guha, Planter Raj to Swaraj, 83. Ibid, 83.

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for the cow. The wild cow was tamed and used in the interest of man. This was done not to harm the animal but to use it for the benefit of the mankind, the supreme creation of God. After finishing the gu-yajnya-the Aryans started to perform the ‘nama-kirtana.’ The Arya-dhama was overwhelmed with the Bivu geet (the song in the praise of Supreme Being.) The corrupted version of that bivu-geet is now the Bihu geet or bihu nama. From the original practice of hari ussari gua-the songs that recite Hari the word huchari gua or the huchari had originated.94

This scenic description of the rituals and their relation with agricultural practices thus comes to override the figurative obscene from the Bihu-geet and foregrounds religiosity as its historical core. This figurative description of the moral order could not be limited to Bohag Bihu only. To elaborate an organic, veracious community life, he extended this logic further and linked it with the entire agrarian production circle. From the planting of paddy to its harvesting by the “Aryan-women,” the pervasive resonance of sacredness expressed through the ‘nama-kirtana’ or more accurately the “Bivu-songs,” the predecessor of Bihu-nama, was thus a condition of survival of that pristine world. However, the bonding between nature and human kind, both the creations of the Supreme Being, was not antagonistic; rather the presence of innocence and moral strength had made the relationship inclusive. When the harvesting was over, particularly during Magh Bihu, the cattle were freed to gaze, The cattle that were tamed with force were now free. The human eats the farm rice and the cow eats the stubble of the paddy. Everyone is happy. What a beautiful scene. What a religious, loving society. What a glorious expression of God’s creation.95

This glorious, moral world of ‘Arya-dhama’ has been shattered by the civilisational logic of the present. The contemporary understanding of Bohag as Rongali Bihu (festival of 94 95

Rajkhowa, Bihu, ii-iii Ibid, iii

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merriment), Kati as Kongali (festival in the time of insufficiency) and the Magh as Bhogali (festival in the time of plenty) was a modern understanding, Rajkhowa argued. In the past, the moral lexicon of religiosity was all pervasive and that is why all Bihus were “rongali” and in those days Bihu were the epitome of obeisance to God. But, “under the pressure of civilisation today the kati Bihu has become an obscure festival, the magh Bihu only a ceremony of pitha eating and the bohag Bihu an obscene festival. That pristine Aryan jati is today’s uncivilised Assamese!”96 Rajkhowa lamented. The overwhelming structure of religiosity, pristine agricultural practice and the embedded Bihu within it produced a new authentic gaoliya discourse. Instead of the given arguments of rustic as the core of the figures of gaoliya, now here the new articulation where the productive core itself represented veracity of Assamese gaoliyas. In 1918, Ganesh Chandra Hazarika, a school teacher in Nazira, published a small tract called ‘Bihu aru tar prakritik chitra’. Claiming Bihu’s long and pervasive presence within Hindu social life in India in general, he declared that though varying according to different social settings and places, Bihu had been celebrated all over India for the last one thousand, five hundred and twelve years. The figure was derived from his own ingenious astrological calculations. Elaborating the complex phenomenon of the sun’s movement and its relation with the Hindu astrological calculations.97 Emphasizing the “greater role” it plays for the benefit of the society, he stressed that there may have some contamination in its long history of existence, but purification would help revive it, in the interest of the society. Giving the example of festivals observed in a different time and place, he argued, he made a allegorical connection between the purpose of “Durga Puja” observed by Ramachandra in trata yuga or the the rasalila of Srikrisna in

96 97

Ibid, iii. Ganesh Chandra Hazarika, Bihu Aru Tar Prakritik Chitra (Sibsagar: Author, 1918), 10-12

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dapara yuga also had meaning. “Like our Bohag Bihu their May Day observed in the first day of the month of May has also some important indications.”98 However in the excitement of the festival time one might transgress the norms of the society. That is why, Hazarika argued, the leaders of society have embedded a religious moral code within the festival: “Today every festival is morally coded. Without having any moral principles, there is no place for festivals in society. If somehow any festival emerged in society based on immoral principles, the leaders of society come forth to rescue society from it.’99 However, unlike Rajkhowa who tried to project the contemporary as somewhat of a burden, Hazarika wanted to fit the Bihu with certain amount of utilitarian justification within his shastric reading and argued Bihu as respite, a temporary halt from “working life.” He argued, Therefore, we believe that the scenes of festival time can help in strengthening the societal norms. If the working society gets happiness through the festival scenes, then their working life becomes interesting. As a result, the economic life of the society gets better along with the mental state of the society which eventually also strengthens the moral ground of the society. If this happens the heart of the society becomes stronger and prosperous. Therefore, how the scenes of the nature help in building the national life of a community can be understood easily. So it is the responsibility of each writer to produce before the working society a sketch of their traditional, ancient things by melding contemporary “According to the Hindu astrological shastra-the Sun is called rabi-graha and believes to be the supreme amongst other grahas. The astrologers in ancient India had known the movement of the sun and also they could calculate the time when the sun moves toward south or north. In the calculation of the last astrologer in ancient India-the sun moved on the last day of ahar and puha month respectively. As the movement of the sun is in an ascending order, now it moves on the 9th days of these two months. On that days sun moves from korkrat-kranti towards south and that is called dokhinyan. Like this the sun moves almost six months and from moker –kranti goes towards north. This is called uttarayan. From the point from which the sun moves towards north is called dakin ayan bindu and that particular point the uttarayan –sankarnti happens-that is called Magha Bihu or uttaryan sankranti .…… When the sun moves from south to north and crosses the bisuba-rekha (the equator line) and from the min rasi nakatra punja to mesh rakhi nakhatra punja-Bisub sankranti or the Bohag Bihu is celebrated on that day. The ancient astrologers exactly calculated the dates of Bihu celebration. Now these festivals are celebrated twenty one days before. That means the 9th and 10th days of the respective months. The change of the dates of celebration is because the sun movements changes only one day in 72 years. That proves that the Bisuba Sankranti gets the name of it in India: 72 x 21= 1512 years ago.” Hazarika, Bihu, 2-3. 99 Ibid, 4. 98

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relevant stuff. The description of the old stuff, their origin and history will erase the superstition about them and enhance the body of the working society.100

In this somewhat utilitarian rationale of observing festivals as a temporary respite to revitalize oneself, Hazarika wants to use the festival time for the greater economic benefit of Assamese society. He urged the Assamese dangoriyas to think about some way out so that along with the merrymaking in the time of Bihu, the people also get some earnings from it. Indeed, Hazarika informed his readers that the executive committee of first Bihu convention of 1917 in Sibsagar, as a strategy to make it a national festival, decided to organize fairs in “each and every” place of Assam “in the style of or better than” the fairs that have been organized during the Bihu time in lower Assam. He argued, ‘This would give the people an opportunity to sell and buy local handicrafts, which would encourage weaving and silks like muga, pat, eari in the villages.’101 As we shall see in a Chapter Three, such a strategy to connect with the rural masses through fairs would become a core strategy in structuring the nationalist conventions over the course of the twentieth century. Hazarika was convinced of Bihu’s potential as a national festival of Assam, when he saw that the Muslims were also observing it. However, he said that there was no need to observe all the rituals of Bihu, but since “Bihu is Bihu,” despite their religious identity, the Assamese should work for the greater benefit of the Assamese nationality. Somewhat indicating the ongoing tension between upper Assam and lower Assam publicist on the universal idioms of Assamese nation, particularly on the question of language, Hazarika was very apologetic that he had not included the “Bihu festival scenes” of lower Assam. Lower Assam’s proximity to Bengal, particularly its language was hardly recognized by the Jonaki brigade, dominated by the upper Assam members. In their discourse, lower Assam’s language and culture was corrupt. In fact, we will see

100 101

Ibid, 4. Ibid, 40.

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in the subsequent chapters that Bihu’s emergence as the symbol of Assamese nation was due to these tensions between corrupt and pristine, profane and authentic. The lower Assam figure of gaoliya with a corrupting “dhekari” language embodied the rustic assemblage of Assamese. Largely an upper Assam festival, Bihu was not celebrated in lower Assam, not, at least, with performances. The lower Assam publicists were opposing this drive of making Bihu as the national festival of Assam. The upper Assam publicists actually trying to resolve the issue by focusing on the connections between rituals that observed in the time of Bihu in lower Assam. The idea of organizing the “lower Assam like fairs’ in the time of Bihu was part of that larger strategy. Hazarika, however, assured his readers that he would write a detail description of “lower Assam Bihu” in the next edition of the book. In his defense, he said, The author had to describe only the sketch the Bihu festival in upper Assam. Lower Assam rituals, particularly those that enhance the moral, fiscal and otherworldly nature of the people, would be taken in this book next time. As I said in the preface, this book is an extension of a little article I had written on the eve of the Sibsagar convention, thus considering it might go against the principle I have not added anything further other than expanding on the earlier essay. Therefore lots of things are not included about the lower Assam festival of Bihu. In the second edition of this book am preparing to include all those things. 102

The new politics over linguistic province, particular the reemergence of the discourse for the transfer of Sylhet to Bengal, the Calcutta congress session of 1917’s acceptance of principal of linguistic province, and particularly the Assamese nationalist anxiety over the question of Goalpara district etc all produced a new inter-valley jealousy between Surma and Brahmaputra valley.103 In this context, Bihu’s significance in the Brahmaputra valley needed to be asserted. The Assam legislative council became the new front for this assertion. Until then the holiday list of Assam proper, excluding 102 103

Ibid, 41. Guha, Planter, 91-92.

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Goalpara, a one day holiday to be declared on Baishak Bihu. Taking up the issue in the council of government, on April 5, 1915, Phanidhar Chaliha, urged the government to increase the number of Bihu holidays. Emphasizing the ‘national character’ of the festival, he asked the government whether it would increase the number of bohag Bihu holidays ‘from 2 to 4’ and ‘magh Bihu from 1 to 2,’ while requesting a one day holiday on ‘kati Bihu.’ Specifically suggesting this new arrangement could be possible by reducing the ‘Sripuja from 2 days to 1, Kali Puja from 2 to 1 day and the Durga and Lakhi Puja from 12 to 10,’104 in the holiday list of Assam proper. In reply, A. W. Botham of the colonial administration, said that he was certain that “if reasoned proposals are made to him by representative bodies or individuals, they will no doubt receive due attention.”105 While this did not seem to have taken place immediately, the issue, however, began to attract increasing visibility, as many of the Assamese nationalists expressed resentment at having to live by a list of the ‘Bengali’ holidays. Amidst the new political alignment with the all-India Congress politics, Aluchani, a journal published from Dibrugarh, invoked this issue in one of its editorials in 1917. Emphasising Bihu’s omnipresent character in rural areas, it declared that We can ignore Kati Bihu and Magh Bihu, but there should not be any controversy that in the time of Bohag Bihu the official holidays should be extended by a few days. Bohag Bihu is the main festival of the Assamese; it is a national festival/institution. This Bihu does not end in one or two days, this lasts for fifteen days. From last seven days of Sot to first seven days of Bohag this Bihu is observed in Assam. In the towns one cannot notice this, but in villages surely he would. The presence of fewer students in the village schools in these days would authenticate this observation. In the town schools, the presence of mufasil students also declines.106

104

Proceedings of Assam Legislative Council (Shillong: 1915) 34. Ibid, 35. 106 “Bohag Bihur Bandha,” Aluchani, 8:7(1917)279-280. 105

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Christening Bohag Bihu as the national festival of Assam, Aluchani particularly underlined the unimportance of Durga Puja in Assam, and argued that “the Assamese are much more fond of Bohag Bihu than Durga Puja. Durga Puja has come to Assam only a few days back but Bihu is age-old.” “that is why” it declared that by reducing the days from Durga Puja, “the government can extend the Bihu holidays.” Trying to replace the Durga Puja, the major holiday of the official list, it demanded, “at least, ten days”107 Bihu holiday. But such an understanding of Bihu as a national festival was immediately contradicted by Assam Bandhab, the periodical that took upon itself articulating the Lower Assam version of Assamese nationalism. Instead of Bohag Bihu, they indeed favored Durga Puja as the national festival of Assam. In a 1917 editorial, Aluchani responded to claim its mainstream position: I think that the editor [of Assam Bandhab] surely does not have any idea of the origins of Bihu, else he could have never expressed such opinion. Though Bihu is older than Durga Puja, like a new almanac it is ever-new. There is no doubt that Bohag Bihu is the main event and national festival of Assamese social life and it is a pleasure that except the editor of Assam Bandhab, the editors of Assam Times, Banhi and Bijuli are with me.108

Such networks of journals for the Upper Assam crusade for Bihu, of course, reduce strength of Lower Assam claims. The claim of Bihu as a national festival was not just only fought within the structure of the discourse of Durga Puja’s proximity with Bengali Nationalism. But, instead of lower Assam specificity, the issue was developed through the universal acceptability of Bihu in both the part by religious communities like Assamese Muslim and the neo-Vaishnavite Mahapurusiya sect of neo-Vashnavism both of which claimed the significance of Bohag Bihu as the national festival of Assam: The editor of Assam Bandhab wrote that Durga Puja is enjoyed by every Assamese irrespective of caste, creed and class. I am surprised that he dared to 107 108

“Bohag Bihur,” 279-280. “Amar Motor Onukole Jot Kinchit,” Aluchani, 8:9(1917) 245.

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say so. In my opinion, this only happens during Bohag Bihu. Muslims do not participate in Durga Puja, neither do the Mahapurusiyas. But Muslims have more of a liking for Bihu, for truth’s sake the editor of Bandhab has to admit this. The Assamese observe Bihu in the beautiful spring when the old year passes and a new year comes. This is our most loved and prided festival.109

However, at the same time, rejecting the rusticity and obscenity arguments of Bihu, Aluchoni provided a detailed picture of the ritualistic observations during the Bihu festival and invoked many allegories of Hindu religious rituals.110 Claiming various rituals of Bihu as “Hindu ritual,” invoking “cattle bath” as the instances of worshiping of “mother-cow,” Aluchoni described different “Hindu rituals” in Bihu: The day after, the Brahmans are paid obeisance with gifts. People also offer Bihuwan or Bihu presents to their respective Satra and Satradhikars. Do they not indicate the tradition of obeisance to the Guru and Brahmans during Bihu? In the night, villagers would go around the households of the village to render hoocharchi that means ‘hari-sankirtan.’ In the village namghar people would gather to render nam-kirtan and then get to know about the future forecast from the Graha-Bipra (Astrologer) by offering gifts to him. Aren’t they religious rituals? On the day of Bihu after bath, wearing new clothes people would pay obeisance to their elders and parents. Relations and friends are invited to have Bihu food and are offered Bihuwan. With the end of the old year, people set aside all their disputes and welcome each other. The exchanging of hugs on the day of Bijoya Dosomi in Bengal are actually observed in Bihu days in Assam. The tradition of feeding poromanna, pitha etc by inviting guest, also suggests that it can be called as the observance of the yajnya ceremony.111

This comparative reading with Durga Puja, developed Bihu’s claim as an authentic Assamese national festival erasing its obscenity appendages. In 1931, Hiteswar “Amar Motor Onukole,” 248. Ibid, 246. 111 Ibid, 246 109 110

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Borboruah, the vernacular historian, joined the fray with a fiery article in Avahan. Claiming that some of the publicists were against any kind of prohibition and reformation of Bihu, he remarked, Perhaps they think that if we are not singing Bihu namas or Bihu geets like “roi boi jai pindhuta nai, sopa nahorore koli e bai—with toka112 in hand, pepa in the mouth, dhul on the neck performing huchari, laughing our hearts out (especially if our young girls and boys under the mango tree could blossom the heavenly flowers with their dance)—our nationality would not survive or no longer exist. I think that kind of fear has no ground.113

Invoking the rustic elements of Bihu and stressing that Assam had unquestionable ownership over Kamakhya, he declared that “from my childhood days I have been hearing that this land is gosani’s land….....I do not understand why in Kamakhya mother’s own land, Durga Puja has become a foreign festival.”114 But such strategy to garner authenticity for Durga Puja in Kamakhya’s own land did not find many takers. The strategic shift in Assamese nationalism, particularly focusing on Sankardeva and the Mahapurusiya sect cult as the symbols of the Assamese nation, inevitably vacated the field of Durga Puja. To authenticate such claims, Ambikagiri Raychoudhuri, responding to Barbora stressed the pervasive presence of god Vishnu in Assamese social and cultural history. In the wake of the Line System controversy, he claimed that the popularity Durga Puja was gaining was because of the “conspiracies of the Bengalis.” Finally, he invoked the idea of Bengali effeminacy: In Ancient times Assam’s name was Pragjyotishpur and Dharmanaranya. It was related to Vishnu puja. We, the Assamese like to observe father Puja rather than Mother Puja. That is why our children’s names were Anundaram , Gunaviram, Maniram, Sibaram etc. Now with the Bengali influence, people are taking some different names. Though Kamakhya was in Assam, Assamese had a 112

These are the musical instruments used in Bihu performance, toka- a bamboo clapper, Dhol- a twin-faced drum, Pepa-a kind of horn made of buffalo horn, for detail see, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bihu_dance. 113 Hiteswar Borboruah, “Rongali Bihu aru Durga Puja,” Avahan, 2:10 (1931), 1106. 114 Borboruah, ‘Rongali Bihu Aru’,1108.

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lesser respect for her. The sexuality cult believer Bengali had respects for her. The Kamrup, Kamakhya these names were given by foreigners. That is why Assamese people do not trust them. Here in this land, like Kamakhya, there are other temples too. Haigrib Madhab, Basistha asram, Aswaklanta, Sukelswar: All are Vishnu temples. Bihu emerged here with the Aryan migration. If we are to agree with the discourse about Bisub sankranti, then the Bihu was observed here since the time immemorial.115 In a simultaneous production, as we saw, the gaoliya discourse had two side and could not function without each other. On the one hand, the Aryan, agrarian and organic foundation of Assamese rural life came to be emphasised as the authentic symbol of the Assamese nation, while on the other hand, a severe disciplining of the popular practices was also emphasised to make Bihu worthy of the name of the national festival.

RURALITY RECONCEPTUALIZED

The townsfolk are not the only people in Assam. Every year, for some days, this people happily dances and sings to laugh away their worries and you people dislike this! Village people are not human beings, you are the only ones? Like you, do you want them to play musical chairs or to play tennis.... Seven generation had passed eating raw fishes. Now, has it to be served with cutlets of fried fish? Today, the Bihu dance becomes obscene. By looking at others, you want to import. So you all want those new customs of the sahabs, where men and women openly dance and hug each other? It is true that in our Bihu under the mango tree sometimes a young man and girl run away without the consent of their parents. Does it not happen in the foreign dances? These activities are bad, no doubt. But instead of regulating them so that they can never happen again,

115

Ambikagiri Raychudhori, ‘Durga Puja Kiya Asomor Jatiya Utsav Nohoy’, Avahan, 2:11(1931)1302-03.

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you are just rejecting the whole thing. Everything has a good and a bad side. Rejecting the bad and accepting the good should be one’s motto. I say Bihu should be maintained as it is. We are what we are. We do not need to be ashamed in front of others.116

So says the wife of Kripabar Barbarua agitatedly. In his famous kripabarian satire, Laksminath Bezbaroa inaugurated a new world of rurality, where nationalism could now say “we are what we are.” In the fantasy of reformulating the “authentic gaoliyas” Bihu had become the sarbojonin, omnipresent reflection of the Assamese popular. In the short story “Bihu”, published in 1924, Bezbaroa had already reflected on the sarbojonin character of Bihu. In a dream, as the story starts, he went to a Bihu field where the people were dancing and singing happily. In the midst of the gathering, he met an old lady, who invited him with a very “natural tone” to dance with her: “Deota, want to dance? Come, if you want to dance, dance with me.” He was astonished by this sudden, somewhat weird, gesture, and in some amazement, he asked the old lady, “You are very old. How come you feel like dancing?” The old lady hurriedly made a dancing gesture and answered, “O, ai, of course I will feel like dancing. How does it matter whether I am getting older or not? I should not miss the opportunity to dance in this yearly feast.”117 Subsequently as he wandered, he came across the house of the old lady where her daughters-in-law were working happily to celebrate the Bihu observances. The universal, sarbojonin character of festivity, the scenic natural innocence of the rural is what Bezbaroa tried to describe in the story. Bezbaroa’s conceptualisation of Bihu performance was indeed new, even in the 1930s when the Congress mobilisation was at its peak. The reason for such newness was that instead of looking only at the question of Bihu performance as a courtship affair, he constituted it as universal, sarbojonin and somewhat non-physical symbol of Assamese

116 117

Laksminath Bezbaroa, “Bihu,” Bahi, 20:8(1931), 340. Laksminath Bezbaroa, “Bihu” Bahi, 14:1 (1924), 235-236.

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rural world intelligently reproducing it within the bounds of the familial. However, despite its acceptance as national festival, in the middle-class circles, in the world of dangoriyas, Bihu performance still had few takers. Bezbaroa was aware of that and in his many satirical pieces in Bahi, lampooning such apprehensions; he tried to establish the significance of Bihu. Bezbaroa’s own understanding of Bihu was a representation of the larger strategic schematics of Assamese language, appreciation of Sankardeva and neoVaishnavite discourse which we will be discussing in detail in the next chapter. Such strategic positioning actually had helped start questioning the alleged certainty of “obscenity” in Bihu. The amalgamation of the rural in the heart of the nation was not an essay task. Chandra Kumar Agrawala, one of the trios of celebrated Jonaki, now was the owner of Bahi, when it relocated from Calcutta to Guwahati. In a letter to Bezborua, his friend and also the editor of Bahi, he said how Bahi had been accused of being obscene for supporting Bihu. But by now, there was tactical resolution to such allegation. Enumerating different popular classics of from both Indian and world literature and their alleged obscenity charges, Chandra Kumar tried to rest his case. It was not the certainty of obscenity that determined Bihu’s isolation in particular, but in the wake of congress mobilisation, it was the “colonial mindset” that restricted the ‘innocent son of nature” to enter in the mandir of Assamese literature. I think you have seen that Banhi was accused of being obscene. Our Kirtan’s Horomohan, Rasakriya, Kuntir Banshaporan, Bidyapati, Sandidas etc Bangla religious books, Bharat chandra’s Bidya Sundar, Rambhabadi elopement stories of Ramayana, Kalidasa’s Kumar Sambhaba in Sanskrit , Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonais, Milton’s Adam-Eve, Shelly, Byron in English—these are not obscene and vulgar. Only the spontaneous rustic poet of Assam, their joy of life is bad, obscene and vulgar. The pundits of Assamese literature, who are guarding the mandir fear that the innocent son of nature could enter mandir. That is why they ordered Bongit to be hanged till death. The bilati dances are beyond any stain of obscene,

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only the Assamese Bihu dance is uncultured rustic performance. The movies are ideal of good taste!118

Though not in the Assamese nationalist structure of authenticity, the emerging anthropological work actually articulated the rustic world with a very different angle. For instance, Rev Sidney Endle’s book ‘the Kachari’ published in 1911 reflected how the issue of vulgarity in Kachari community Bihu was significantly positive because this vulgarity keeps the people to some extent “beyond the influence of destructive vortex of Hinduism” as he claimed, “ in which their simple primitive virtues might otherwise be so readily engulfed, and the adoption of which in whole or in part is invariably accompanied by a grave and deep-seated deterioration in conduct and character.”119 The verses or the Bihu namas that otherwise be seen for its literary, aesthetic qualities, Endle’s tried to articulate the specificity of Bihu namas and their exact relation to the everyday of the community life. Giving a translation of a Bihu nama, 120 he declared how and in what way it related to particular “incident” of the community. He declared, “the above couplet may perhaps be fairly looked upon as typical illustration of the Kachari temperament and character” and “if inferred from them does not greatly differ from human nature in other and more civilized countries of the world.”121 Such ethnographic constitution of everyday, the universality of human character was reproduced in Dibeswar Neog’s anthology on Bihu named “Akul Pothik.” First published in 1922, in the preface, he declared how the literary and other specificity of Assamese characters were represented in these Bihu songs. Comparing the “hesitation” of “English girls”

118

Chandra Kumar Agrwala, Letter to Laksminath Bezbarua, 9.6.1931 in Patralekha, eds: Maheswar Neog, (Jorhat:Assam Sahitya Sabha,1968)192. 119 Rev Sidney Endle, The Kacharis (London: Macmillan and co, 1911) 53. 120 You come to me in bright array: I am not for you; be off, I say. This dandy swain my mate would be? No “second hand lover”, girls , for me” 121 Rev Sidney, The Kacharis, 52-53.

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with free spirited, committed, daring “Assamese girls,’ he claimed, “where the English girls hesitated in saying, O Romeo Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo Deny thy father, and refuse thy name; Or if thou wit not, be but sworn my love, And I ‘ll no longer be Capulet.”

But Neog claimed, without any hesitation Assamese young girls said, “After Sot Bohag has come. The babari flower has blossom If I have to die with You, I will die But I will leave my caste and creed for you.”122

In the second edition of the book, he, however, invoking the idea of obscenity, discussed the essential human characteristics situating human beings in the middle of the both god and animal. Claiming that if Humans were god then they would have had only concentrated on the “platonic love” but since there were the characteristics of animals too, both instincts were found in the Bihu songs. However, focusing on the “deep aesthetic” Bihu namas he tried to invoke the essentially philoshophical nature of Assamese “gaoliyas,” ignoring the namas that focused on the physical instincts. These new idea of essential characteristic in certain sense produced a new kind of essentialism to Bihu songs. Despite the constant charges of obscenity, the vernacular journals helped to reproduce, publicise these new aesthetic sensibilities through literary experiments, while at the same time an alternative code for the Bihu festival was invented in accordance with the strategies of Congress political mobilisation. The conceptual similarity between these two was weaved through the question of national culture and its hybridisation through modern genres. Jyotiprasad, Chandra Kumar’s nephew and one of the tallest cultural

122

Dimbeswar Neog, Akul Pathik ( 1922,Tezpur: B.R.Kalita and Compeny, 1928) ii.

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activists of post-colonial Assam, wrote about this new experiment adventure in the preface to his 1918 play, Sunit Kuwari, , In 1921, when nationalist sentiment inspired Assam, I was considering whether to use our national tunes in the theatre songs ... at the same time we could not fathom that Bihugeet, Bongeet, Ainam, Biyanam, Tukari nam could be blended with modern musical instruments ... We, the educated youths considered them as the representation of rustic life...one day coming back from Ban Theatre, I heard my father performing a kirtana vocable on the organ. I was stupefied. I had never heard anyone performing an Assamese vocable on the organ. That night I could not sleep. The whole night I was thinking of the ways to use the Assamese songs in my Sunit Kuwari play ... This was how I gave a new music in the Sunit Kuwari songs with Biya nam, Ai nam, Bongeet, Bihu geet music ... But the performers were opposed to it. Clued up to the Calcutta theatre songs and Hindustani classical music, they just rejected everything and told me, ‘What? Do we have to perform these rustic, village folk’s songs? Should we have to perform Bihu on stage?”123

Despite the opposition, Jyotiprasad held his ground and eventually Sunit Kuwari was staged with these new songs. It was hailed as a watershed moment in Assamese nationalist circles. But such hybridization of Bihu was not entirely exclusive to the performative practices only. Even in the field of literature, new poetry imitating Bihu couplets started to come up as new middle class aesthetic consideration. Published in Avahan in April, 1931, poet Shailadhar Rajkhowa tried to imitate the Bihu form in his poem named Rongmonor Bohagi sur.124 Basically, narrating a story of a girl, her beauty, her elopement, then the bride price and finally, her multitasking ability in the new home as a wife. Such constant invocation of elopement and afterwards familial joy were some of the major strategic possibilities Assamese nationalism was thinking of, which

123 124

Jyotiprasad Agarwalla, Sunit Kuwari (1948, Guwahati: Publication Board of Assam, 2013),4,5,6. Shailadhar Rajkhowa, “Rongmonor Bohagi Sur,” Avahn, 2:7(1931) 1121.

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we will be discussing in the next chapter. But such new imitation of the Bihu form in terms of experimentation in literature, particularly in poetry and songs, a new genre called Bangeet emerged in the Assamese cultural scenario. Developed and popularised through the All India Radio, Guwahati after its establishment in 1948, but as middle class sensibilities, it had continued for some time. One of Ganesh Chandra Gogoi’s poems would help us in understanding the formal structure and its appropriation of Bihu. Published in Avahan, in April, 1933, as a song, he wrote, The beauty of the gateway of a house is godhuli gopal flower oi Baranda’s beauty is khorikajai flower Kitchen garden beauty is Babori flower oi, Cowshed cow The garden’s beauty is the black bumblebee Sali paddy of paddy field The beauty of Luit is the sizzling bank Hill’s beauty is shy stream Drops slowly The valley’s beauty is deer of forest Makes mind restless!125

Gogoi’s “geet” genre was very simple and this had already been recognised as ‘Bangeet.” Maintaining the performative structure of Bihu, particularly imitating its “rhythmic commensurability” through words (for instance, here it is “oi”) a new kind of middle class genre had been produced. The name itself-Bangeet, songs of the forest, addressed the rusticity of the genre. But instead of proper Bihu songs, this new genre would want to replace, discipline the Bihu nama. However, such representation of the rustic did not remain for long. As we will see, in 1950s with emphasis on Agriculture

125

Ganesh Chandra Gogoi, “Geet”, Avahan, 4:7(1933) 856.

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and labour this elitist strategy of representing the rustic needed a serious negotiation with the popular. In this chapter, we discussed how different discursive and material productions actually constituted the question of sacred and profane and how different temporalities, actors, discourses and particular specificity of such historical moments determined the biography of Bihu. The chapter studied the articulation of the practice of “elopement and abduction” of unmarried women by men during Bihu, and how the evangelical discourse of colonial modernity with active support of local Assamese “notables” consolidated the patriarchal power and authority and criminalised the emotional world and cultural practices of lower classes in mid nineteenth century colonial Assam. However, these question of practices or focus on familial values turned towards the question of language and “festival idioms” and how the new discursive appendage wanted to reinvent it within the prescribed norms. However, by mid twentieth century, a creative tension was generated through the dialectical interplay of profane and sacred in the imagined figure of the Assamese “gaoliya” subject. The figure of the rustic “gaoliya” was now seen from the vantage point of the sacred through a celebration of the new ideas of Aryan, agrarian and organic foundation of Assamese rural life. On the other hand, a severe disciplining of the popular practices was also emphasized to make Bihu worthy of the name of the national festival. Finally, we discussed how different strategies were projected in order to displace the “obscene” character of Bihu. Through textualization and hybridisation of a new literary canon or through a comparative projection of Bihu namas with world classics in order to invent a new essentially sacred Assamese “gaoliya” subject.

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Nationalization of Affect: Bhaona, Bihu and Linguistic Nationalism

In just thirty years or so the rustic became the authentic. The texture coarseness and crassness mow came to be recoded with that of innocence and stability of the familial life. Bihu, once the example of obscenity, now came to be seen as the creative genius of the Assamese village life. This return was of course shot through several anxieties. Like all other nationalisms, Assamese nationalism too was ready to misrecognize the rustic. In their inchoate fantasy of recognizing the village life, the nationalist elite chose to remember the textual rather than the performative. The labouring bodies of the villagers could not be easily abstracted, but their “poetic genius” was now a prized jewel in the strategies of Assamese nationalism. But why was it so? Why did nationalism need the rustic villagers and their “poetic sensibilities” and, for that matter, how did the practice of elopement come to be reconfigured in a positive way? In this chapter, we intend to trace these questions through the specific discursive anxieties of late nineteenth and mid-twentieth-century Assamese nationalism. We start with late

Chapter Two

nineteenth century metropolitan publicist anxiety with the expressive quality of Assamese language and also how the same anxiety was developed differently in the celestial world of Majuli, the seat of the Assamese Vaishnavism. In both these worlds, this anxiety centred its textual politics in the same performative genre called bhaona, said to be the invention of Sankaradeva, the sixteenth century preacher of Assamese Vaishnavism. Then will we discuss the question of particularization of Assamese bhava -the bhava that supplemented the national-familial. How in this new strategic maneuver, the hated practice of elopement, became a priory condition or for that matter metaphor of stable familial life, without any blot of disrupting “parakiya”, the dominant bhava in the Chaityanya bhakti marga of Bengal.

BHAVA IN A POLYGLOT WORLD

In the nationalist imagination, Bhramaranga, a translation of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, has been considered as the first Assamese drama, performed or staged in a proscenium style. Translated and performed around 1888 in the metropolitan location1 of Calcutta, particularly in the premises of mess-houses, where Assamese students put up themselves, and subsequently staged in various urban centers of Assam, the drama received considerable attention among nationalist circles. Postulating, the metaphor of the secular as the mark of the “Assamese nationhood,” where locals dissolve into the universal river of the Assamese nation, a twentieth-century critique recounts the drama, Ramakanta Borkotoki of Jorhat, Ghansyam Borua of Golaghat, Gunjanon Borua of Sibsagar and Ratnadhar Borua of Nagaon translated the drama. The names of the characters of the drama were very much Assamese and the language was

1

The performance was carried in various mess-houses, like 2 Bhavanicharan lane, famous 67 Mirjapur Street, acted by stalwarts like Laksminath Bezbor, Ratnadhar Barua, Kanaklal Borua, Rajanikanta Bordoloi etc.

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also very much homely. The blank verse of the original was ignored and the expressions were used in the prose form.’2

Not simply because its formal similarity with the modernist understanding of performative reality or the metaphorical consistency of its authors dissolved regional existence in the service of nation as it was recounted later, at that time it actually invoked a certain aspiration for Assamese nationalist politics. Situating within the temporal understanding of “Assameseness” by invoking the signs of the “homely” metaphor, the translators wrote in the preface, the drama is in English, the bhava is English, conduct and behaviour are English: not easy to appropriate in Assamese, sometime compelled us to abandon some of its contents….in order to bind it within the conduct and behaviors of our desha, we have changed some of poet’s main contents but have tried not to disrupt his poetical sensibilities.3

In short, for the first time, through translation, it invoked the potentiality of Assamese language to be expressive in manifesting universal human emotions. When it came out in 1889, in print, Satyanath Bora, acclaimed writer of Bahala Biyakarana, underscored this expressive quality of the Assamese language. Recognizing the imperative of cultural difference as the impediment of appropriation (and that is why the translators ignored the blank verses of the original for authentic appropriation in the Assamese language4), he wrote, The English bhava and the Assamese bhava are not very similar. Something the English laugh at may produce sadness or anger among the Assamese. I had a belief for some time that there was no haisarasa and birarasa in Assamese language. I have read lots of old and new Assamese books but I have not come across any good book that deals these two rasas. In Sankaradeva’s nats, there are

2

Satyendra Nath Sharma, Asomiya Sahityar Samitkhatmak Itibirta(Guwahati: Author,1981)338. Sri Ratnadhar Barua, Sri Ramakanta BorKakati, Sri Gunjanon Barua, Sri Ghanasyam Barua, Bhrama Ranga (1888,Guwahati: Barua Agency, 1937) i. 4 For a detail understanding see, preface of the translators, Barua, Bhrama Ranga, i-ii. 3

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some sentences that invoke the sentiment pride, but that cannot be understood as real birarasa. There are some books on haisarasa too in Assamese. Kaniar Kirtan and Bahire Rongsong etc were written in haisarasa but there is no laughter in the writing style, though the sentiments within them are amusing. After reading this book, I have come to a conclusion that within the very structure of Assamese language, there can be books on laughter. This book was translated in Bengali too and I have watched their performance. I do not think that was better. Everyone in Assam should read this book and if this book is taken up for performance then people will realize the possibility of writing amusing books in the Assamese language.5

To paraphrase this modernist argument, the possibility of a language whether it is universal, is determined by how it reflects the sentiments, feelings of a universal mind. Within the bounds of this linguistic imagination, colonial or for that matter, metropolitan codification of human and its essentials, the emerging aesthetics sought to reconfigure the Assamese language. To be more precise, the strategy was, to reconfigure “Assamese culture” and for that matter, ‘Assamese’ as the constituent of that universal human. However, such emphasis on the quality of the language expressive of universal emotion undermines any alternative performative convention and replaces it through the understanding of the textual. In this section, we will discuss how the late nineteenth century Assamese nationalist publicist anxiety was centered on this question of textual expressiveness of the Assamese language and how this anxiety actually produced a “textual” strategy for negotiating the pre-colonial performative genre called bhaona, said to be the invention of Sankaradeva, the sixteenth century preacher of Vaishnavism in Assam. However, the universal quality of the language is expressed through the particular specificity of the genres. Their precise specificity, formal conventions are significant particularities that dictate the expressive structure of a language. At least,

5

Satyanath Bora, ‘Bhrama Ranga,’Jonaki, 1:4(1889) 37.

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that is what the late nineteenth century Assamese language warriors believed in. Ratneshwar Mahanta in his anthology, Kobitahar, regarded as the first anthology of poetry in Assamese, under the title of ‘some rules to be maintained in writing poetry’differentiate the idea of verse from the prose. Detailing the difference between methods of writing poetry, he narrates how through different grammatical and lexical disruption, poetry is written. For instance, in the first rule of poetry writing, he argued, that to maintain the lyrical sensibility a joint word (juktakhar) had to be made soften by putting two different words- “Instead of Mukti- Mukuti(মুক্তি-মুকুতি), Bhakati instead of Bhakti(ভকতি-ভক্তি), Sakati instead of Sakti (শকতি-শক্তি), Sumaran instead of Ismaranar (সুমৰণ-স্মৰণৰ) etc.”6 The problem is that such lexical and grammatical disruption actually corrupts the authenticity of that language, and for that reason, given the limits of any poetic convention, in this case pre-colonial Vasnavite literature; a language could not be registered as authentic expression. This prose-poetry distinction actually generated an interesting tension within the Assamese students in metropolitan Calcutta. Through the writing style of two Assamese language stalwarts –Hemchandra Barooah and, Goonabhiram Barooa, two distinct camps of Assamese writing style appeared among the late nineteenth century Assamese language warriors. Padmanath Gohain Barooah narrating the distinction between this Schools recounted that, “one is pure prose writer, while the other is a prose-poetry writer, for instance one writes- Hoiche (হৈছে) , the other writes-Hoieeche(ৈইছে ) etc.”7 Of course, one can articulate it as a difference between masculine prosaic and softened poetic, but it was also symptomatic of the anxiety regarding the lack of any prose literature in the older Assamese literary canon, which could confirm the authentic original, everyday reality of the Assamese

6 7

Ratneshwar Mahanta, Kobitahar, (1890, Guwahati: Assam Publication Board, 1977), iii-iv. Padmanath Gohain Barua, Mor Sowarani (Guwhati: Assam Publication Board, 1971) 31.

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language. 8 Padmanath confirmed that for prose he followed the Hemchandra School, while for poetry he tunred towards the Gunaviram school, rather than mixing each other the importance of prose is that it not just confirms the masculine authority of a language, but represents the original, authentic reproduction of the everyday-at least, that is what metropolitan Assamese were thinking about. The only alternative was and despite its structure of multulingualism, as , Maheswar Neog wrote, invoking the commonsensical notion of the day: “Before that, the example of Assamese prose style was Sankaradeva and Madhavadeva’s bhaona’s sutra katha and the actors’ dialogue.”9 Neog’s commonsensical understanding about prosaic conventions, however, bears no resemblance to the late-nineteenth century understanding of bhaona or its language. On the contrary, Hemchandra Goswami, one of the famous trio of the Jonaki brigade in his essay on Assamese language had actually critiqued the structure of “non-reality” in the bhaona form, but representing a different nationalist anxiety. Published in Jonaki in 1891, he wrote, If we consider rationally, the natas written by Sankaradeva were not very significant. The aim of the drama and novel is to present highest moral characteristic of human so that it helps reader and audience to take these moral standards in their own life. In fact, it is sure that Sankaradeva also tried to present those moral standards through his natas to the ancient people. But unfortunately he could not make any substantial contribution there. He did not try to create any character by himself or he was unable to translate those characters created by others in a proper way. His Sitasoyambar Ramcharita was poorer than the characters of original Ramayana. Rukminihorona’s Krisana was not comparable to Bhagavata’s or Mahabharata’s Krishna. In short, though

8

Katha Gita of Baikunthanath Bhagabatv Bhatachrya-a summary of Gita was first published in 1918. This book was regarded as first Assamese book that correspond the Assamese prose style. See, Baiuknthanath Bhagabatva Bhatachrya, Katha Gita, ed. Hemchandra Goswami (Guwahati: Guwahati Sanaton Dharma Sabha, 1917). 9 Maheswar Neog, Baikuntha Nath Bhagawat Bhatachrya, ( New Delhi: Sahitya Academe, 1984) 19.

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Sankaradeva had made much contributions, he was a very poor dramatist indeed.10

Of course, the textual understanding of Sankaradeva’s bhaona is obvious in Goswami’s argument. But despite his sensitive understanding to the overall contribution of Sankaradeva in the essay, Gowasami was focusing on the contemporary nationalist anxiety with the Brajabuli language. The shared history of brajabuli language with the Bengali counterpart needed an alternative strategy to authenticate Assamese language. Putting Brajabuli, particularly his natas within the domain of popular, he nationalised the language of Kirtana and Dasama. Sankaradeva had written in two languages. One was based on different languages, particularly influenced by the Maithili and Oriya languages. The other is more or less Assamese. The example of earlier one is his natas and the second one is the language of Kirtana and Dasama. If any linguist takes some sentences from the Kirtana and compares them with the language of his natas, he would say that they are not the writing style of one person. Like the famous poet of Scotland, Robert Burns, Sankaradeva had intentionally written in two languages.11

Representing a contemporary commonsensical notion within the nationalist publicists, he claimed that since there was no respect for Assamese language, Sankaradeva thought, “If it is written in pure Assamese, people may not be interested and generally people like to hear a foreign language.” Such a notion was substantiated through the late-nineteenth-century discourse that, “In our eyes Bengali sounds sweet, while because of the everyday use of Assamese we cannot realise the sweetness of our language.” However, Goswami claimed, “Sankaradeva did not write kirtan and dasama in that same language,” because the main purpose of the kirtana and dasama is to “communicate something through logic.” As “knowledge is gained through ideas, and 10 11

Hemchandra Goswami, ‘Asomiya Bhasa’ Jonaki, 3:5(1891)310-311. Goswami, ‘Asomiya’ 308.

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ideas are carried by words; whether it sounds sweet or not, if we understand the ideas then a language is good enough for that writing.” And that is why for Goswami, “bhaona’s language has to be sweet,” as “it satisfies the eyes and ears.”12 Such a distinction between logic and performance has a distinct resemblance with the prosepoetry split. As Goswami confirmed that “this kind of need for embellishment” enabled the pre-colonial authors to borrow words from different languages, specially “brajabuli, Oriya, Bengali and even Persian.” This tradition, he claimed, “helped the Assamese language” but on the other hand also harmed it as “there is no example of pure Assamese left in their writings.”13 Ratneshwar Mahanta, confirms this anxiety in a different way. In the same book insisting on the use of “old Assamese” that “consisted of Oriya, Brajabuli, and many other languages,” he declared that without “those languages” writing poetry in pure, beautiful Assamese is a “tough job,” because “the word stock of Assamese is small and the good, beautiful expressions are rare, and if we abandon the words and expressions that have been continued for some time, what will be left?” 14 The point is that one can be assured of the specificity of the “extra reality” of the poetry genre and this “extra reality” does not harm the language. But when it comes down to the prosaic where the real has to be produced through the textuality of the everyday. And in that case, whether it is Brajabuli language or performance of ‘laughter” that “has to be produced through dances,” as Mahanta stressed in his article on bhaona, they “can never be called bhaona.” This was the crux of the prose-poetic tension in the late nineteenth century metropolitan understanding of Assamese language. Mahanta, in the article later gave a detailed narrative that described the problem of reality in the bhaona performance. He said, Let me first take the Sutradhar character of Bhaona. The basic task of Sutradhar is like that of the English theatre’s prompters who instructed the actors from the Goswami, ‘Asomiya’ 308-309. Goswami, ‘Asomiya’ 309-10. 14 Mahanta, Kobitahar,i. 12 13

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wings what to do when or what dialogue when to deliver. Our Bhaona Sutradharis should be doing this. They should not dance. After some fluttering of arms by the Sutradhar, the Gosain enters. The moment he enters into the Bhaona he starts to dance. Where the patient, placid image of Lord Krishna and where this image of dancing Lord Krishna! Our Bhaona can be called in totality as dance. Take, for instance, Ramacharita Bhaona—saradhanu in hand, Ramchandra has to come dancing. In our Assamese Bhaona, the world famous characteristics of Ramachandra such as patience, calmness are expressed through dance. Similarly, Sati or Laksmi, on the rhythm of khol, with the motion of hands and gesticulations, they enter in the Bhaona. Let me take another point—Ravan has already died, but the Sutaradahar says, ‘Ramachandra’s arrow makes Ravan senseless. By seeing this Mandodari enters and now her bilapo (crying)’. But when Mondodari enters, to see her departed husband she would enter ‘thomoki thomoki’ on the rhythm of khol. Where the sorrow and sadness, when one hears the news of the death of one’s husband, and where this dancing gestures. When the dance finishes, suddenly the Sutradhar will recite “bilap koilla’(she cries) and immediately Mondadari starts crying. The dancer is crying!15

Of course, the proscenium reality against which he compares the form would not have much resemblance with the pre-colonial bhaona. The notion of fixity, temporal, spatial limitation of reality as articulated by Mahanta seems, does not fit in the pre-colonial understanding of God and life. An unresolved problematic of non-temporality, the agenda of violating the set terms continuously haunted the emerging aesthetic politics of Assamese nationalism. Interestingly, the so called “non-modern” celestial world of Majuli was not outside of this “textual” anxiety. The metropolitan anxiety of the general lack of the language in terms of its expressive quality also deeply shattered the neo-vasnavite world. In fact, it was Deva Dattadeva, the legendary Satradhikar of Auniati Satra, in a personal 15

Ratneshwar Mahanta, “Bhaona,” Jonaki, 1:6(1889). 47.

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conversation with Ratneshwar Mahanta, in 1889 said, “Assamese be used only in our daily transaction and ordinary talks but books [should be] written in Bengali.(original in English)”16 Dattadeva’s emphasis on Bengali as language for literary and performative expression, of course, did not go down well in the Assamese nationalist history. He is still being seen somewhat as a proponent of Bengali culture in the heart of Assamese national core. The official historian of Auniati Satra, Tairthanath Sharma in 1970 defended his “cultural initiative” as modernist proponents. He wrote, Along with the Satra’s Debabadya (musical instruments), he was the first Satradhikar who included western musical instruments in the Satra. To produce a good melody he used the behela in Sattriya music. He had great respect for Indian classical music. The road of Dutta Deva Pravu was also taken by his successor Kamaldeva Adhikar. Because of these changes some people complained that barebongolua (foreign elements) rituals have intruded into Auniati Satra. But today, musicians accept that if our Satras would have adopted those elements, the preservation and developments of old Assamese music could have been possible.17

Of course, Sharma’s very considerate opinion about Dattadeva had not found much of a taker. But Sharma’s strategic silence on Bengali language in Dattadeva’s bhaona is actually the major site where contemporary nationalist waging a serious polemical war against Dattadeva and Auniati Satra. But it was not just Dattadeva or Auniati Satra that initiated the Bengali” bhaona in the celestial world of Majuli. This polemical focus on Auniati has another tale to tell. We will return to that in a subsequent section. Contrary to the usual criticism, Dattadeva’s charita or other materials of the time actually talks about the strategies of expression rather than the significance of a particular language.

Ratneshwar Mahanta’s letter to Hemchandra Goswami, 1st October, 1888, Ratneshwar Mahanta, Ratneswar Mahanta Rachanavali, ed. Jogendra Narayan Bhuyan (Guwahati: Assam publication board, 1977)343. 17 Trithanath Sharma, Auniati Satror Buranji, (Majuli: Auniati Satra,1975) 279. 16

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Completed around 1921, and written by Sri Sri Dharchandra Uja, interestingly tried to highlight those incidents, events that influenced Dattadeva to bring certain new cultural elements to the Satra. Uja wrote about an incident when Satradhikar met Major Jenkins, then the head of the colonial administration in Assam. In that meeting Jenkins bought a western musical instrument and played out before the Gossain. Though the writer was silent about any subsequent development, it confirms a kind of “cultural” relationship with the colonial administration. The charita and other contemporary materials of the time also suggest increasing popularity of the Satra in terms of its “cultural” embodiment largely in the upper Assam both among the locals and cosmopolitan audience. Increasing presence of colonial officials and the members of ‘Fouze” in visiting Satradhikars bhaona performances in upper Assam towns could be gathered from various charitas and Vaisnavite materials of the time. No just that, even in the inner spectrum of the vasnavite world bhaona had become increasingly popular. When the Satradhikars would visit each other, the performance of bhaona either from both the Satra or from one of them had become a ritualistic aspect of Satra ceremonies. This growing connection between bhaona and Satra indicates the new popularity, particularly its structural shift in terms of form and content in midst of the new colonial environment. The language question is, of course, paramount for an emerging cosmopolitan world. But before we go into it, let us discuss the question of music or expression of bhava first. Uja’s repeated description of Dattadeva’s connection with Bangadesh, particularly his interaction and communication with the musicians of Bengal confirms the question of expression of bhava than the question of any national language. In various moments of his pilgrimages, he met musicians of Bangadesha and interacted and listened to their music. At a particular moment, Uja mentioned distinctly how the artists from Bangadesha came to the Satra and how Dutta Deva learnt music from them. Artists from Bangadesha come 82

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And perform various music and instruments

Dattadeva, as Uja claimed, had learned “music from them” and “developed quality in raga, tala and mana” and with this new found learning he had created many new verses and music. As the occasion of “Janmastomi” neared, Uja described, Dattadeva wrote a few verses on Krishna to perform on the occasion. Stressing the beauty of those verses and their music, he described, Melodious were its taal-maan Takes away the breath of the spectators For the satisfaction of my readers I thus, quote here a few Wonderful is the bhagavata katha Listen to these verses of Dattadeva.18

No doubt, the verses are in Bengali, if we take those verses as representative of Bengali writing. Here are the verses that Uja mentioned in the Charita. Dinanath din gale eadin-e eakbar doya kor| Ami oti obhajon:najani bhajan: Bisoy bish pane hoye tatpor || Deh daba dhan: bhabieya Apon: Mayai mugdha mon: korashi Bhramon| Bharanta hoye: gyan harai ea: Nakarilam ou Pada ismaran || Duranta Bisay: Buga Duerasoy: Hoiyasa Chanchal moti atisoy| Abhoy Charane: Dahi may Soron: Dutta kohe Das buli yea Dhara||19

The intensity and affect of these songs in the minds of audience was duly mentioned by the charitkar. By mentioning a moment from the Kansha Badha Bhaona, he described, 18 19

Sri Sri Dharachandra Uja, Sri Devadutta Deva Charita, (1921, Guwahati: Bani Mandir, 2004.) 146. Uja, Sri Devadutta, 146.

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hearing the news of Kirsna’s death, how the gopis of Braja cried by stopping the ratha of Akura. The gopis are sad They cried stopping the ratha of Akura These songs are very beautiful and touching Written by Sri Dutta Deva.20

However, on the other hand in the same place, a new type of bhaona production was tried out by the Kamala Bari Satra. At least, in the printed edition of the Foujia nataks, the present Satradhikar, Narayan Gowasami claimed so. In the preface to this edition, the Satradhikar did mention that it was invented by Satradhikar Kirsnakanta Goswami of Kamalabari. The first bhaona was written in 1848, called Rajasuiye based on a story of Mahabharata. The second was Duti Sanbad written by the same Satradhikar in 1849. The third one is Rukmini Horona, which might have been written around 1849-1853. Other Satradhikars too followed after him and at least until 1934-the bhaonas were performed in Satras and other areas of upper Assam in different occasion. Brajabuli or a kind of multilingual vocabulary were maintained in this form of bhaona. Like Dattadeva, the verses or the “geet” were in Bengali language, while occasionally a “Fouzia” language was maintained. For instance, in the Rajusuiyu bhaona, King Jorasandha, asked his minster to throw the kings gathered in his kingdom into the prison. Sutra: Ahe Savhasada Luko ! Jorasandha nirpa sabhamodhya asi Mantrike Daki je bolise. Jorasandhaubas. (o the people gathered here. See and listen, what the king Jorasandha tells his minister)

20

Uja, Sri Devadutta, 246.

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Jorasandha: Hiyaau mantri ! Mera Mukulib ju sab raja hey, mera hukumse sabku pakurke leke karagarka bisme pai jinjiri lagaike bondh karke rakh. Pisu sabka sir katke sandhi ku pujenge. ( Jorasondha: Come here Mantri ! My order is go and throw all kings into the prison. Later we will worship god Chandi by cutting their heads.) Sutra: Nripritir Prasanda adaesh sunuye agune mantri jaya nirpatiganak Kkaragare jangiri (diye rakhalo. Syan bhujan napai mahadhuke dukhita hiuye joise bilap korite lagilo. Ta dakho ho suno. (Hearing this intense order Mantri has thrown the Kings in to the prison. The kings without having food and sleep started crying, that now listen and watch) 21

As Suttra mentioned, the Kings without having food and sleep cried. The “bilapa” was however, in Bengali language. Geet rag biyahgora, khemta tal Ae ki haire hai kise hoilam rai Durukh pran jai kai dharan najai re| Ohi duruk karon taron nibarono ke| Karagare nibidhi pran gey Bhalare bhalare bhal musabar kompal Ripu sone joghone bondhane din gey|| Jorasondh osandh nibbndhra ponang| Nipatiye kondha sondhi chandhi pujonong22

Two points could be gathered from here. Like Dattadeva, it is no doubt, for intense expression of a particular rasa that the Bengali language is used. While on the other hand, for the new political regime, they occasionally used some kind of “Fouzia” language. Today, after years of commonsensical understanding of the normative relationship between Satra and Assamese nationalism, we hardly suspect Satra’s 21 22

Narayan Chnadra Goswami, Fouizia Nat, (Dibrugarh: Dibrugarh university, 2011), 198-99. Goswami, Fouizia, 199.

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proximity with the colonial regime. Not at least, in cultural sense. And this issue is more prominent for the so called “non-royal’ Satras. We believe, it was the assertion of political proximity, rather than somewhat ‘catering to audience” need that determined this new “language politics” of Kamalabari. In fact, Kamalabari’s emerging presence in different colonial gatherings, particularly through Rajasuiye nata,23 was so prominent that even it could assert itself to include within the sitting orders of four royal Satras, that endorsed by the colonial regime in the queen Victoria’s jubilee ceremony held in Sibsagar in 1876. Finally, it was Dattadeva’s strict emphasis that reclaimed the order excluding Kamalabari Satradhikar.24 Such distinct “political proximity”, their particular aesthetic experiment with language and rasa had to be readdressed, when Assamese nationalism reclaimed the whole vaisnavite practice. In midst of growing Assamese nationalism’s demand, around 1910s Dattadeva’s successor, Kamaldeva emphasizing the significance of Assamese language wrote a couplet and made it compulsory to recite in every gatherings and bhaona performance. By middle of twentieth century, instead of brajabuli nata, a new genre called matri bhasa bhaona emerged in Majuli and spread immediately in the different places of upper Assam. Here is the Kamaldeva’s song: O friend come, lets sing a song There is a big gathering But o friend, there is a point, The singing of Bengali song is fruitless

Despite Dattadeva’s dominant visibility in the new bhaona form, however, on the celebration of his completion of sixty years as Sattaradhikar of Auniati in Jorhat, Kamalabari performed the Rajaysuia bhaona in the night in presence of district colonial heads and tea planters. Basaram Khuand, Dattadeva Charit Arthat Auniatir Bhutapurba Satradhikar Sri Sri Dattadeva Gousami Pravhur Sankirpta Jiban Charita (Jorhat: Author, 1904)9. 24 “Prabhu said with the order of Raj I have come here taking so much of pain I would go only if the norms were maintained Else I would stay at my camp Heard this Krishna Pran Sharma went quickly And conveyed the intention of Pravhu to the Sahab Hearing that the Sahab vetoed Bezborua’s plan Declared that the earlier plan would retain.” Uja, Sri Devadutta, 200. 23

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The mind of Assam is become ascetic So it gives up others language Listening to it mind becomes relieve Like language if people practice dharma and work The everyday rituals, shall understand Assam is rising Rising continuously, that is the logic of history Diz Kamal’s this statement may prevail always.25

But what, then, was the bhaona’s own aesthetic convention? Was there anything that particularly addresses the non-proscenium notion of bhaona’s convention? Fortunately, a mid-twentieth century manuscript articulates such a convention. Written by Darika Dvija Mishra, a Mahapurusiya Satradhikar of Golaghat, in the midst of MahapurusiyaDamodariya debate around 1910 he gives biographical accounts of neo-Vasinavite preachers in Assam. Started to write around 1910-11, this controversial work tried to readdress many of the discourse from mahapurusiya perspective. However, in the biographical account of Sankaradeva, he articulates an altogether different convention of bhaona. He writes, In seven rasas he [Sankaradeva] writes the nata Please listen what they are The gayan-bayan charms the audience through the performance The sutra of the nata entertains the people of good taste The scholar would understand the sluka of the nata The meaning of the geets understand by the cultured audience The brajabuli language is understood by the rustic audience The mask and su would entertain the dolt Wrong or right but its duty for the Krishna-the God These are the seven rasas in the natakas26

25

Sri Sri Bishnu Chandra Deva Auniatiya Gitabhinoy,(Majuli:Auniati Satra, 1993) i.

Stradhika

Goswami,

Abhimanor Poriniti Ba

Jotanal

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Dvija Mishra’s alternative reading of the bhaona aesthetic has a semblance with the Sanskrit nata convention. The difference is that instead of the equal citizenship model of proscenium aesthetic and the domineering textual, here rasas are not equally generated or mediated through textual convention. The segregation of the audience, their specific, presupposed taste mediates through the particular specificity of the performance. However, it was not outside of the Assamese nationalisms strategic appropriation of Sankaradeva in the structure of Gandhian humanism. Dvija Mishra’s alternative reading was subsequently appropriated by Vaisnavite experts like Banikanta Kakati, Mahewswar Neog etc as the evidential understanding of the pre-colonial strategy of performing bhaona and thus an alternative reading of expressive reality had become possible around 1950s. But when Assamese nationalism was looking for a new kind of strategic, equal citizenship model of the Assamese national subject, such segregation would not help much. So they instead went on to find “textual” literary quality in other traditional forms like Bihu, Biya nama, etc.

LITERARIZATION OF BIHU

I have said somewhere earlier that the words that bear complicated meaning cannot be found in the early stage of a language...With the development of the language, new words from other languages would enter into the language. A language stays pristine and original in the very initial stage. That is why I request the individuals who try to investigate from where a language originated by comparing two languages, to look at the household words. I want to ask them how do they find the similarities between household words like jui (fire), pani

26

Dwarika Dvija Mishra, Santawali, ed. Dr Kesavananda Dev Goswami (Nagaon: Narowa Balisattra Management Committe, 2012) 78.

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(water), dingi (neck), kolaful(), korongn(), salauri(eyebrows), etc with Bengali language.27

Says Laksminath Bezbaroa, in one of his talks on Assamese language in late nineteenth century Calcutta. The significance of the “household” or “everyday” words is manifold. In this instance it reflects the distinct independence of the language. The shift in understanding of Bihu, particularly its significance within the language strategy of Assamese nationalism could be related to this new politics of producing an authentic language. The late nineteenth century anxiety with the Brajabuli language or the supposed multilingualism of Vaisnavite literature could be resolved through the reproduction of so-called homely words. Based on a linear civilizational model, as Bezbaroa had spoken in the talk reflected the new found understanding of the “primitive” as the authentic core of the nation and its language. So, instead of “primitive” as rustic, as the dominant understanding goes, the strategic importance of primitive authenticity had increasingly becoming popular in Assamese student circles in metropolitan Calcutta. In fact, the split in the celebrated Jonaki group, as we mentioned in the earlier chapter, was on the question of Bihu. That is why, Bihu’s entry into the Assamese nationalist circle in late-nineteenth-century Calcutta was not as a “performative” genre, but as a “rustic” primitive genre that resemblance with the authentic, origin of the language. Such a structure of understanding continued loosely until the 1970s when the politics of performance becomes critical in articulating the Assamese nation. The strategic significance of the rustic was interestingly developed by Laksminath Bezbaroa in his 1911 book called “Burhi Air Sadhu”. One of the most celebrated classics in Assamese literature, the book is an anthology of stories for children. Despite its focus on children stories, the strategic significance in terms of Assamese language politics is

27

Lakshminath Bezbaroa, “Asomiya Bhasa,” Jonaki, 5:7-8(1895)52.

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evident in the preface of the book. Invoking the specificity of the Assamese word called “Sadhukotha” (stories), he tried to separate the Assamese from Bengali: These old tales are from an ancient time, old people in the ancient time created them for the sake of their children to give them good advice, moral lessons, etc. That is why its mane is ‘sadhu kotha’ (saintly words). No nationality or nation has named their tales in such high words. The European calls it folktales, the Bengali calls it ‘fairy tales’ (rup kotha), but like the Assamese they do not call it sadhu kotha. The language and folktales are the heart and mind of a nationality. The Assamese call language maat and the folktales sadhukotha; despite that, some people think Assamese and Bengali are the same.28

Though Bezbaroa was explicitly in conversation with his Bengali counterparts, it was also evidently clear from the response after the publication of the book that he had a larger argument to make. A review of the book in 1914, Assam Bandhab, the mouthpiece of lower-Assam language discourse, criticized the endeavour but clarified the core strategic structure of Bezbaroa’s articulation of the rustic: No doubt the language is completely new, we believe the stories have also become new, because the author indeed ‘selected, added and removed parts of the stories.’ But for the sake of the truth, he rides the horse recklessly……the author is a scholar of Assamese language; his language should be correct and beautiful. But we must say we are disappointed. The pervasiveness of words reflecting the destitute of the Assamese social life has influenced almost all the stories badly. For example-deau dupal, tuai-virai, khot bandh, lunglunlungai,tekamtekam, onai-bonai, geruka-geruk…not to tell words like ‘nerayan’….for spelling, instead of trying to give examples of Hemkosha to others in order to resist the ‘bare-bongoluas,’ we hope that the author will follow the Hemkosha himself. … in many places so many unrealistic things are written that when we came across

28

Laksminath Bezbaroa Burhi Air Sadhu (1911,Guwahati: Kitap Samalay, 2002) 1.

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them, there was an irresistible feeling of closing the book so that we can maintain our peace of mind…29

Bezbaroa’s understanding of the lower Assam language was based on its corruption, non-authentic word stocks, evidently reflected in its proximity with the Bengali language structure. Such proximity enabled him to emphasise the “rustic” word stock that reflected the specificity of the Assamese language. Against this, the lower-Assam language warriors, were arguing for a standardised, strict Sanskrit-origin Assamese language, which would also resolve the lower Assam-upper Assam differences. And that is why the specificity of the rustic only reflected the destitute of the nation but not the authentic origin, as Asam Bandhab claimed. But despite the objections from lower Assam, the question of the rustic had already become the dominant discourse as the authentic, pristine origin of the nation. Padmanath Gohain Barua, in his presidential speech at the first Assam Sahitya Sabha session in Sibsagar in 1917 emphasised the importance of the connection between everyday language and the language of literary expression. He claimed a simplified literary language will help in realisation of “jatiya jibon.” Otherwise, there will be hierarchy between the two worlds. He stressed that the language is not for educated people alone and that is why he claimed that the developed nationalities had tried to maintain a substantial connection between the spoken and the written language.30 Such an understanding of the production of a “jatiya jibon” reflected the Assamese publicists’ new strategy of language activism through the newly-formed Asam Sahitya Sabha. Hemchandra Goswami, however, articulated this “jatiya jibon” in a more complicated way. Rather than a narrow focus between spoken and literary, in his presidential speech delivered in the Asam Sahitya Sabha session at Tezpur in 1920, he tried to connect the specificity of jatiya bhava and its reflection in the literature. “The mentality of an Chakraborty Kabyabinod ‘Burhi Air Sadhu Somaluchona’, Assam Bandhab 3:8-9(1914) 284-86. Padmanath Gohain Barua, “Presidential Speech”, ed: Atulchandra Hazarika, Asam Sahitya Sabhar Bhasanawalee (Jorhat: Asam Sahitya Sabha, 1955) 5. 29 30

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individual is mediated through the nation and the time he lives in and these bhava reflected through the expression in religion, education, politics, behaviours etc...Nobody could destroy those jatiya bhava within him,” Goswami claimed. Such an embodied subjectivity essentially reflects in the “jatiya sahitya” which is produced through the collective effort of the national subject, Goswami argued. The importance of jatiya sahitya is that it preserves the “culture and ideals” of the whole nationality.31 In such an understanding, Goswami urged his fellow literary activists to collect the geets that are “popular in the length and breadth of upper and lower Assam.” The geets that sung by Assamese daughter in laws, young girls, cow hearders, Assamese boys and girls, water buffalo hearders like dhai nama , gorkhiya nam, bihu nam, biya nam, ai nam, baremahi geet, etc.” But as many would wonder about their value in terms of literary, aesthetic sensibilities, Goswami argued that these village songs reflect the “national character.” Goswami thus wrote: Every nationality of the world has such geets and every nationality had preserved them with love and care. But till now, we have not learnt their significance as a national treasure. That is why we keep it away in the hands of the illiterate village folks. In those geet are reflected our nationality’s childhood—bhavas like love, fear, playfulness are so intricately weaved that without them there will be no essence of our nationality.32

Such an understanding of the essential cultural specificity and its deep connection with the nation and its subject thus enabled a new kind of language politics in the middle of the twentieth century Assamese nation. But in this notion of bhava, and the relation between language and the nation, the performative aspect of the geets had been displaced and its textual significance was invoked as its essential core. Not just Assam Sahitya Sabha, other nationalist organisations were also constantly focusing on this new discourse of collecting and preserving national treasures. Despite Goswami’s 31 32

Hemchandra Goswami, “Presidential Speech,” Hazarika, Asam Sahitya, 61 Goswami, “Presidential” Asam Sahitya, 62.

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understanding of their primitive aesthetic sensibilities, however, many of the language activists took them seriously, invoking the high literary structure within them. In the secretarial speech of the Assam Student Association in 1916, Chandranath Sharma compared them with the Shakespearian aesthetic and urged his colleagues to collect and publicise them. He said, In Shakespeare’s drama ‘As you like’ we read that poetry originated on a tree. But that was Shakespeare’s romance, En glish romance, while no one bothers to see that Assam is such an incredible place, where in the thin, weak Assamese language the spirit of poetry is so dominant that here poetry flies in the air. The poetry of the Assamese gorurokhiya, mohrokhiya,33 and the poetry of jakoiya and dhandaowani34 women are best in any respect. But those poems are still not collected or have not become literature. Assamese Borgit, Gorokhiya git, Ainam, Biyanam, Dhainam35 need to be collected and published… those songs are not just poetic they are very much national It will bring new creation in Assam. Those songs are not only poetic they are national. Some of the Assamese sadhu kotha has been published by Bezbarua recently. However, there are thousands of them, which need to be published before they are lost.36

Stressing the urgency of the issue, he appealed to his fellow students that “if there is any responsibility of the Assamese students to the nation, then it is to collect this national treasure.”37 Bezbaroa, on the other hand, quite decisively stressed on the poetic sensibilities of the Bihu nama in an attempt to override charges of obscenity. In his one of the satirical writings, named “Borboruar Bihunama”-he described how the character called Sudorshon Sharma was astonished by Barbarua’s Bihu nama singing. Barborua,

gorurokhiya, mohrokhiya-who attends to cow or buffalo ( in Assamese ‘moh’ means buffalo) during grazing. Jakoiya Act of fishing, particularly by woman with a specific instrument called Jakoi and Dhandaowani, female who harvests the paddy, Dhan-rice grain. 35 Gorokhiya git-the songs that sung by boys who attend cows, Ainam-it’s kind of song that sung in praise of local goddess, Dhainam-baby song sung by the Dhai, ‘Dhai’ means the woman who has expertise over pregnancy and used to attend the pregnant mothers. 36 Chanranath Sharma, Sanmilita Prabhandha (Calcutta: Asam Student Asociation, 1916)7. 37 Sharma, Sanmilita, 8 33 34

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however, reflecting its pristine specificity, finally sings a Bihu nama. With the domination of scenes of the nature, its various local specificities, the everyday household activities—all represented the romantic purveyance of the Assamese nation, particularly its rustic world. And then Sudorshon responded with wonderment, “Borborua Dangoriya! Despite being a Bihu nama, it is very beautiful poetry.” Borborua replied Why should you reflect on its poetic essence? Go away and be civilized by labelling it as Bihu nama. You all have become very civilized! Very civilized, indeed! But Barborua wants to be uncivilized by singing the Bihu nama. What do you think about that?38

Published in 1923 and regarded as the first anthology of Bihu songs, in Bohagi, Nokul Chandra Bhuyan for the first time elaborately detailed the expressive structure of bhava in Bihu songs. Segregated into different bhavas like beauty, different kinds of love, desperation, infatuation, sadness, etc., and finally with some huchori, the book for the first time articulated the different poetic sensibilities of the Bihu nama. Reflecting on its production and collection of Bihu songs, in a very harsh environment, in the sixth edition of the book in 1963, he recounted, “Once the Bihu songs were not recognized by so called educated people....from 1917 to 1919 I have collected these songs.... some songs are included here after selection. Some words in bad taste have been replaced by some new words.”39 Despite constant obscenity charges, the book however continued to be one of the dominant anthologies of Bihu and its poetic sensibilities. The review of Khan Bahadur Sayidur Rahman, later the education minister of postcolonial Assam, in a 1923 article in the Times of Assam, described the significance of Bihu songs and the rural landscape by invoking the classics of world literature.

Laksminath Bezbaroa, ‘Barboruar Bihu Nam,’ in Bezbaroa Rachanavali, Vol-4, ed: Nagen Saikia (1917; Guwahati: Banalata, 2010) 138-39. 39 Nokul Chandra Bhuyan, Bohagi, (1923, Shillong: Chapala Book Stall, 1963) xv. 38

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The festival of Bihu is pre-eminently a national festival to the Assamese and the songs sung therein are national to the core.....To a casual reader, these pastorals may appear stale and commonplace having no efficacy beyond affording certain vulgar enjoyment to the rural youth of Assam, but to a curious student of Assamese literature they are of historic importance forming as they do one of the stocks in trade of Assamese literature....they remarkably illustrate Wordsworth’s definition of poetry, that it is the spontaneous over flow of powerful feelings. The subtle landscape painting of upper Assam, the vigorous poetry of the rural Assamese youths, the singing matches, the love-lays of courtship or compliment in them –all remind us of the celebrated pastors of Theocritus and Virgil. National to the core, they of all others, afford the surest keynote to Assamese rural life so child like in its innocence and so grand in its simplicity. 40

In such spirit of poetic sensibilities within the Bihu songs also enabled the rustic gaoliyas as the inheritors of high poetic talents. Now, their quality of conjuring up of instantaneous poems had become the inspiration for highly acclaimed Assamese poet like Sailadhar Rajkhowa. In his autobiography, he recounted the “natural poetic sensibilities of the illiterate beautiful village girls of Assam.” He wrote, During the rongali Bihu time, when we go here and there to watch the Bihu of the gavaru—the village girls—they shot us one impromptu jura-nama after another. I was very surprised with such a display of poetic talents. To be in the loop with them, I too tried to write some Bihu geet at that time. But, we could not compete them as we did not have those talents to create Bihu geet in an instant. Those illiterate, naturally beautiful women were a metaphor of a happy, figurative poetry. They encourage me to write poetry.41

The innocent son of nature had already entered the pious mandir of Assamese literature. From the 1910s onwards, in different corners of Assam, the publication industry

40

Khan Bahadur Sayidur Rahman, 19th May, 1923,The Times of Assam. Sailadhar Rajkhowa, Shaildhar Rajkhowa Rachanavali, ed: Manjumala Das(1967, Guwahati: Lawyer’s Book Stall, 1992), 275-76. 41

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boomed, drawing its strength from different popular publications. With different maneuvers in tandem with the various needs of the readers, books on different subjects specifically concentrating the “rural” were published from upper and central Assam. Among them the Dhalor Satra library of Jorhat and Bhatachrya Agency of Dibrugarh were the most popular publication houses at the time. Using their enormous rural networks, particularly Dhalar Satra produced a huge amount of books on different rural practices. Whether this new process helped the nationalist publicists strategy of collecting the “poetics” of the rural, but even in this kind of popular print experimentation, a structural shift was in order, particularly in terms of standadrdising different local specifities of certain performative practices. On the other hand, the puthi genre was still being used, not just in reproducing the Vaisnavite repository but to appropriate it for producing new exotic stories, translation or adaptation for the rural world. The practice of performative reading was still there, at least, that was what many of the authors of new popular tracts believed in. And to cater the need of these readers, a huge amount of tracts published sometime disseminating different nationalist strategies (Gadapani-Jaymati story for example) and sometime translating exotic stories from European classics. Kaimara Danobor Judha written by Mahidhar Das and published from Orang in 1923, was one of the text that tried to appropriate the Chimaera, the monstrous fire-breathing creature of Greek mythology in the Assamese puthi genre. Instead of taking any departure from any convention of the puthi genre, he maintained the usual convention of making obeisance to god and significance of the God’s lila in the story and emphasis the universality of God.82 While in the same way, he finishes the story with the verses that usually suggests its reader that to read the story carefully and as that would eventually help the reader find the other worldly life prosperous. However, here he just

82

Mahidhar Das, Kaimera Danabor Judha, (Orang: Author,1923) 1- 2.

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makes a small maneuver and says to his reader that “who reads this story knows as the saint,” and finishes the story.83 Such attempt of secularization of Vaisnavite puthi genre was, however, not without the strategies of Assamese national popular. Of course, there was a hierarchical split between high literary Assamese journals and these popular tracts, but the publications itself complicated the process. This mediation between high and low literature, their formal split did not necessarily have to be contradictory rather their particular hierarchical constitution itself recognized the validity of the primitive pristinity. For example, in 1918, Dhal Satra Library, Jorhat published a book called, “Dhul, Mridong, Khul aru Talor Malita.” Compiled by its energetic mahapurusiya Satradhikar, Tirthanath Goswami pravhu, the book no doubt supplemented the growing boundless of literature on certain performative practices of “Assamese” Life. It was part of the emerging repisotary of books on “performative practices” like “Bhakuiler Biya” or frog wedding, the ceremony performed for rain etc. But what is interesting in this book that it supplemented a ‘discursive” origin with the adi nironjon, the God of the godess. Make my obeisance to adi nironjon first, The God of all the gods. He who created the universe through his lila, Created the earth by casting his eyes I make my thousands submissions to such God, Then, I make my obeisance to the feet of mother Saraswati. O’ mother Saraswati please be on my tongue, Remind me whatever I forget during this performance.28

Thus starts the ‘Dhulor Malita,’ roughly the genealogy of ‘Dhul,’ the performance of the ‘dhulias’ when they play at a wedding ceremony. The performance starts through a conversation between two dhulias, impending one to ask certain genealogy of certain 83 28

Das, Kaimera, 14. Sri Tirthanath Goswami, Dhol Mridong Khul Aru Talor Malita, (Jorhat:Dhalr Satra,1917) 1.

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things, another to answer. Emphasizing, almost constantly, certain knowledge of the genealogy as the prerequisite of a ‘dhulia’, the text starts with asking several questions about the origin of dhulia himself – linking it with the larger questions such as the origin of earth, its parental origin, the time of its birth so on and so forth, and with the answers the next phase begins. The narrative shuttles between the ‘inventory’ and the ‘sastric,’ in the sense that largely it sticks to the stories that the neo-vasnavite ‘sastric’ referred to, while constantly travelling at extraordinary pace referring one ‘Bhakti potal29’ when it takes departure from the ‘sastric,’ as the authentic repository of these knowledge. The text claimed, there was not just four yuga, actually there were eighty yuga before that. But the significance of these yugas was that here the bhakti was pull down from the heaven. Without Bhakti there was no music. So the instruments like Bin, Papa, Dhul, Khul, Mridong, Tal, Banhi, Tukari, Tobola, Khuti-tal, Negara, Khonjori, Dhuluk, Behela, Sarengdar, Gogona, Muruli, Kali, Dhak, Doba, Kanh, Joydhul, Xutuli etc are the ‘gandharba30 badya’ born in the heaven, along with these, many other musical instruments are also pulled down from heaven and thus in the early Satya Yuga the musical instruments came to the earth along with the Dhul. The Mahadeva of Kailas was the creator of Dhul. The seed of ‘sam’ tree was given to Brahma by Krishna, the adi nironjon and eventually Brahma had given it to Narod. Narod planted it in the earth and at the early hours of the morning (xash nixa) two leafs of ‘sam’ appeared. The nine ways of Bhakti embraced the sam tree, the ‘parisod’ (the helpers of Shiva) are the leaves of it and the goddess Parvati was its coat. The mahadharma came to be the core (sar) of the tree. Then the performer elaborates the genealogy of the Dhol making. As the story goes Biswakarma cut the tree and took it on his shoulder (kanot lole bhar), Sukumal barhoi ‘Kolu satya kotha Jonmo potole bisari-said it checking in ‘Jonmo Potol,’ also sometime the ‘Bhakti Potol’ when it speaks about ‘Bhakti,’ this constant reference to ‘potol’ seemed to be referring to a ‘Dhulia sastra’ and the reference of the ‘Jonmo,’ ‘Bhakti’ etc are the chapters of it. Goswami, Dhul, 13. 30 Gandharba are the performers in the paradise. 29

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made the Dhol at the advice of Biswakarma. There are four colours that used in dhul, they are- la, hangul, nil and harital. The king of Lanka, Ravana had a seven colour palette, by getting that palette Sukumalo barhoi made the colour by mixing the colours on it. As the cow’s skin was invaluable, essential part of Dhul, the performer now elaborates the genealogy of cow. From the body of the God Suravi the cow had born and Suravi is the mother of all cows of the earth. Dhoboli, Pirili, Kajoli and Paroli these are the cows of four yuga. The colours of the cows were different in different yugas. In Satya yuga, cows colour was sukula, the white, in the Trato it was Pito, in the Dapor it was porola, in Koli it was Kopila. There were nine colours of cows; they are pakhori, rangoli, mugi, koli and Kopila including the other four colours of the four yugas. 31 As the story goes, from the sperm of Dhibor, the instrument maker was born and he made thousands of khul, mridong etc musical instruments for gandharbas. Bharon, Kohon, Jolu and Bhulai these are the four persons who had made the instruments in four yugas. In the southern direction, on the ausi tithi, Kopila, the cow had died and Bhulai musiar, the instrument maker, skinned the Kopila and put the skin in the sun to dry and then one fifth of the skin was put onto the Dhul. The ten ‘indriyo’, the senses, emerged in the Dhol and started to rustle (rau), with the Brahmas stroke the instrument started to sound, Bhakat black Bee entered in the womb of the Dhol and started to crackle, when pitched on the Dhol it started to resonate. The sound of Dhol is carried to distance by air, which is why the sound of Dhol goes far away. In the yuga Koli Kopila the cow’s skin was used From the skin of Kopila the borati was made The Kali gosani incarnated to maya And she made the katoni kutuni with her maya In the ‘soro’ goddess Saraswati, moon and sun lives Nandi Bingi and the parisod, the stuff of Shiva was ordered 31

Goswami, Dhul, 11.

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And they have become the molua, konari, foring of the Dhol

The stick, through which the Dhol is pitched, is the most sacred thing in the Dhol performance. The stick is made of bamboo; an elaborative genealogy is in the text. Bhaktir pream roso bhaor hoila pit That how as part of dharma the bamboo was born Maje gathi age soru guriti sokot The four head Brahma was in form of the mari Xai banhar murha ani rolahi burhai Monday and Wednesday put soil at the root The sprout of the bamboo got up at the middle of the night Three hundred sixty khator32 stay at the roots After three years the bamboo become matured From that xukan lakachi fali dhuwa sange thoila After six months stayed in the dhuwa sang The dholar mari was made I have said it truly as I have checked it in the janmo potol. 33

Like everything, the Dhulia has an origin, though may be it is quite mundane in the sense of his parental origin, but as every living creature has an unworldly genealogy, the Dhulia or for that matter every child gets the touch of unworldly when they finally come to the earth. Interestingly before the unworldly, the ‘material’ or ‘scientific’ process of bodily evolution of a child in the womb was narrated in an extraordinary detail. In the first day the sperm blended up with the blood In the fifth day it became like a size of marble ball Then it became egg like by the month On two months the body came into form 32

A kind of spirit lives in an open place, Benudhar Rajkhowa, Assamese Demonology, (Calcutta; Patrika Press, 1905)131. 33 Goswami, Dhul, 13.

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On three months nail and hair had come On four month the seven dhatu had come On fifth month the sense of hunger and thirst had come Then what mother ate he ate In this way he lives in the womb The dhulia has born on the Friday, with the right hand The tithi is krisana partipod on the sunda banana leaf The goddess Lakshmi and Saraswati was there The Saraswati goddess of learning goes and lit the lamp The ten months water had been cleaned by the bajani The umbilical chord was being cut by taking me on her hands my umbilical chord was retained in the womb of my mother34

He also narrates about his cloths that he wrapped on his head during the performance. The cloth was used by Krishna on the lower body and on the order of his guru he wrapped it on his head. He put the mark on his forehead by making obeisance to Kesobo, another name of Adi nironjon. In his entire bodily spectrum or perhaps on his senses reside the gods according to their status and ranks in the heavenly administration. Interestingly in this genealogy, the heart is the centre of everything thus the madhava, another name of adi nironjon resides there and the others subsequently in this hierarchy, however there is no mention of the bodily hierarchy for subsequent gods. Then he had made obeisance to the feet of his guru, the teacher and put a mark on his forehead by taking dust of his guru’s feet. This way he became the Dhulia.35 In the Ramchandra’s weading in the Satya yuga, the Dhol was performed by Sudharma Dhulia. In the Trata, in the marriage of Mahadeva the Dhol was performed by the 34

Goswami, Dhul, 21. “The Krishna’s pit cloth this is I wrapped it on my forehead by the order of my guru I put the mark on my forehead by remembering the Kasoba, the God In my heart the madhava and subsequently the others in this way I put the mark on my forehead with the dhuli of the guru’s feet By this way I have become the dhulia.” 35

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Binondi Dhulia. In the Daporo, at the marriage ceremony of Rukmini, the Dhol was performed by Onadi Dhulia. However in the Koli, by the teaching of Nodi Dhulia, there are infinite numbers of Dhulia came into existence. Such new discursive potentiality of “Dhuliya” uja tradition also supplemented the Bihu practices, its musical instruments and on the figure of the dhuliya itself. It was the origin from where the almost non visible dhuliya of Bihu performance had become the dominant figure of Bihu performance. Rather than the performance of Bihu as such, these new knowledges produced a new space possible between the Sastric and the primitive pristine. We will see in the next section how other strategic maneuvers actually tightened this mediation.

ASSAMESE BHAVA, ASSAMESE PREMA

Inappropriate, emotional singing of Nam-Sankirtana makes your blood boil, and the veins swell, and this boiling blood goes to the brain and causes long term psychological damage. That is why in almost all sankirtan singing, one or two persons faint. Nervous excitement is the sole reason for this. Sankirtan is like a chilli which burns your mouth and causes only indigestion, nama kirtan is like black peppers which is less spicy and helps digestion. But despite that one fails to understand why some educated youths join them.36

An anonymous author published this in Chetana in its Mahapurushiya issue in 1929. The author represents a new politics that cannot be understood only in the ChaitanyaSankaradeva paradigm. Instead of getting into the different specificities of these debates, I would like to discuss here the discourses that particularised an Assamese bhava in Assamese Vaishnavism and how this had a larger connection with the reGoswami, Dhol, 22. 36 Unnamed, ‘Dhrama Sambondhye Ekashar,’ Chetana, 9:2(1929) 44.

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appropriation of Bihu, particularly its elopement aspect in the middle of the twentieth century. Such new placement of Bihu and elopement as the process of familial stability brought home a new authentic metaphor to Bihu politics. Of course, it was true that the recurrent invocation of Chaitanya in the Assamese popular, through some of the Chaityanya Satras of lower Assam and particularly through the Damodoriya sect, one of the four sanhatis of Assamese Vaishnavism, needed to be contested in order to establish an authentic Assamese religion keeping Sankaradeva as its head. The Mahapurusiya sanhati particularly invoked the ritualistic principles of “NamaPrasanga” as the only way of salvation, the Assamese national politics tried to produce a “sarbojonin” tradition of Assamese Vaishnavism. Publicists like Laksminath Bezbaroa, Banikanta Kakati etc intensely engaged in the polemics through the metropolitan journal called Banhi, particularly against Assam Pradipika, the Dibrugarh journal edited by Rajani Kanta Bordoloi. To cut a long story short, the main contours of the debate was that the Brahama Sanhati, which was claimed to be established by Damodardeva, emphasised on “Gyan Marg” or estoric ritualistic principles. While on the other hand, it also claimed that instead of Sankaradeva, Damordordeva was actually indoctrinated by Chaitanya, the founder of Vaishnavism in Bengal. This supposed proximity with Chaitanya and along with their Sakti rituals were the two major points upon which attacks were made. “Ek-Soron-Bhagabawati nama dharma,” as it was called, basically emphasised on the naam, the non-deity rituals, God Vishnu as the supreme being. Stressing the importance of naam, Bezbaroa wrote, “. “Anti-naam dharma people used to argue that if mukti’s path is so simple then a parrot or a myna can get mukti if it recites the name of Radha-Krishna. And thousands of people who recite ‘Rama-Krishna’ every day will also get mukti. If that happened there will be no space in heaven.”37 Defining what the naam-dharma actually was, he argued that actual

37

Laksminath Bezbaroa, ‘Sampadokar Sora,’ Bahi, 5:1,(1914),655.

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recitation of naam could be possible only with true sincerity and devotion. Without that there will be no naam, such is Sankaradeva and Madhavadeva’s actual teaching. Citing Sankaradeva he said, “Recite Ram and hold the form of Ram in your heart….Krishna’s nama would concentrate your mind for your devotion/recite the Krishna nama continuously/supplicate before Krishna in your heart.”38 He argued that the dharma of Sankaradeva advises people to recite Krishna naam everyday because as the devotee recites the nama continuously, it yields an interest and enthrallment that will light up God in his heart. Such simple ways of salvation not only resolve the question of salvation but for nationalist politics, through the form of naam singing the figure of the individual would dissolve in the location of community. That why the “gyan marg” of Hindu rituals was severely criticized on the point of its exclusiveness as it forecloses the ambition of “sarbajaninata.” In the wake of the national movement, such a concept of “sarbajaninata” actually reconfigures the “rustic” site of the popular and instead of hierarchies a notion of secular community could be framed. Not just the production of a secular community, but in many diverse ways the discourses were articulated, appropriated and disseminated by both the camps. For the purpose of this chapter, we would like to engage with the politics of particularization of bhava and how this alternative reading actually generated a new kind of understanding for Bihu and the contentious issue of the late nineteenth century—the practice of elopement. In short, how in opposition to Chaityana’s “parikiya” bhava, Bihu and its elopement practices were celebrated as the procedure of familial stability, hope, and loyalty of the subjects of the nation. Sarat Chandra Goswami, the first general secretary of Asam Sahitya Sabha and also a member of one of the Chaitanya Satras in lower Assam, narrated Sankaradeva and Chaitanya’s idea of the bhakti marg. Making the similarity between both, he declared that Chaitanya’s dharma was based on “love”

38

Bezbaroa, ‘Sampadokar, 655.

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while Sankaradeva’s was “bhakti.” Love and Bhakti are not the same. Trying to give an example, he claimed that in the father-son relationship, the bhakti bhava is dominant as the son must show bhakti to his father, while in the husband-wife relationship the dominant bhava is love. In bhakti, he claimed, the relationship was hierarchical, while in the relationship where love is dominant it was equal. Stating the difference, he said, “the Bengali poets are infatuated with the premlila of Radha-Krishna, rag-anurag and man-abhiman. But in Assam Sankaradeva’s dharma was based on bhakti. Assamese poets hardly mentioned Radha. All of them said, “Krishnar Kinkar” or “Madhava Das”39 But despite the differences, Goswami wrote, there is a similarity between the two. He claimed “both the “dharmas” believed in the “niskarma marg”—Sankaradeva’s is “niskarma bhakti” while Chaitanya’s is “niskarma prem.” Quoting a famous verse from Madhavadeva’s Namghosha, “Muktitu nispriho jitu, sahi bhakotoku nomuh,” he claimed that these are the example of “niskarma” bhakti. One should pray before the God without expecting anything in return. For Chaitanya, Goswami claimed that the ideal of niskarma marg is Radha-Krishna. He declared, “Love for friends is not niskarma. It always binds through some sort of responsibility. There is some kind of social interest in it.” However, in the love between husband and wife, despite the “feeling of responsibility,” he stressed, “But for the consort or concubine (parakiya) except the lust, there is no self-interest in it. In the world that is the best example of niskarma and selfless interest of love.”40 Delieanating the difference between “namakirtana” and “sankirtana” through some examples, he claimed, If you think about an individual’s qualities sincerely in your heart for whom you have enormous respect, and slowly emotion takes hold of you and finally you open it up through a song—that would be called nama kirtana. To placate the higher authorities, we recite nama kirtana. In order to please the officers from the

39 40

Sarat Chandra Goswami, ‘Sankar aru Chaityanar vashinab dharma,’ Asam Bandhab, 2:6(1916), 138. Goswami, ‘Sankar’,138-39.

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upper rank we do their naam-kirtan. And after returning at five in the afternoon, when I show affection and tease my wife in the bedroom by engaging in talks about less salt in the curry, her love for the child that exceeds her love for me etc, then I actually do her sangkirtan.41

Such non–antagonistic, cautious and somewhat homely articulation of difference between Sankaradeva and Chaityana’s bhakti marg, could probably be accepted without much problem. But when Dimbeswar Neog, then an emerging, talented young writer tried to put his foot in such controversial issue, without much understanding of Assamese nationalism’s strategies, it becomes problematic. Ambikagiri’s editorial comment on the essay distinctly addressed the particular strategic articulation of Assamese nationalism’s fantasy of Assamese subjects. Published in 1924, as “Diha nam”, Neog tried to articulate difference between Assamese and Bengali Vasnavite literature. Stressing the regional differences he claimed that though there was no celebration of Radha-Krishna in Assamese litarture, yet, “a little bit of Radha Devi cannot but noticed directly or obliquely through the characters of other gopies.” And he believed sometimes, “it can be said to have occupied the central position.” In an attempt to resolve the ugly debate that going on sometime around it, he declared that the Sakhya bhava in Bengali literature was actullay replaced in Assamese literature as DasyaBhava or streebhab. And since the Assamese are inheritantly embodied the “streebhava’, there was no need to separate Radha from Krishna. He wrote, “ Due to the inherent Assamese streebhava all the gop-gopis are that much worshipper without any division of gender; in that stage of worship, there is no difference of male and female; there is no difference of general duty and non-duty; in front of that Man, all are female.”42 When the Assamese nationalism was trying its best to assert the masculine might of its subject through articulation of Lachit divas etc, the idea of an inherent

41 42

Goswami, ‘Sankar’,139. Dimbeswar Neog, ‘Diha Naam,’ Chetona, 5:11(1924), 635.

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feminine in Assamese subject was difficult to swallow. Through numerous editorial comments, Ambikagiri responded, There is no sense in these words of the writer. The main Bhava of Bengali Vaishnav literature is actually ‘Madhur Bhava’. In Radha-Krishna’s leela one can notice madhur Bhava at work, not sakhya bhab. The relationship of Krishna to Arjun can be termed as sakhya bhab. Similarly, the Bhava of the worshippers like Uddhab, Akrur etc toward Krishna is defined as dasyaBhava in Indian Vaishnav Literature. In Assamese Vaishnav literature, DasyaBhava holds a central place. But what is streeBhava in it? what is its meaning? I have failed to fathom it even after reading all the Vaishnav literature. What is the meaning of “Assamese inherent

Streebhab”?

In

Assamese

old

literature,

society,

behaviour,

conversations there is not even a trace of streebhab. The essence of Assamese society and literature is something else. If the writer thinks his life has been fulfilled by gulping the syrup of the rasagolla of Bengali cheap literature and now looking for the same in homely fenipitha, then the writer should take rest from pen and paper for a few days. He should rather study the whole of Assamese Vaishnava literature with a comparative methodology and he should make acquaintance closely with the essence of Assamese society. He will be able to utter something valuable only after gaining possession this way.43

What then was this “inherently Assamese” bhava? Ambikagiri never clarified. But given his entire life’s emphasis on masculine superiority of Assamese nationalism, he would definitely take the masculine than any kind of feminine bhava. In 1931 Durga puja-Bihu debate with Hiteswar Borboruah, in Abahan, Ambikagiri asserted that there was no tradition of “mother Puja’ in Assam. The inherently masculine Assamese would make obeisance to god Vishnu than any feminine “mother.” Alluring to some kind of rusticity in tradition of “mother Puja”, he claimed that traditionally the “culture of Assamese” was “instead of doing mother puja with affection and teasing, the Assamese 43

Ambikagiri Raichudhuri, ‘Edirorial Comment,’ Chetona, 5:11(1924), 635.

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believed in doing father puja with respect.”44 Bezbaroa, however, with a no nonsense tone openly attacked the somewhat inherent obscene fantasy of Chaitanya’s bhakti marg. Refusing to accept any serious bhakti potentiality in the Chaitanya preach marg and particularly his commitment for such deep theoretical understanding, he claimed, “Basically Chaitanya wanted to get a taste of this parakiya love. But incidentally, he got the chance to express the yoga dharma. That is why along with the porokriya he decided to preach the sankritan.” To elaborate his point further, Bezbaroa gave a metaphorical example, “Suppose you are going to buy some stamps from the post office. Then, nearby you see that the Saturday market is open and there some good “rou” fish for sale. You go there and buy one for yourself!” Marking an elaborate difference between Sankaradeva and Chaitanya, he said, the character of Sankaradeva was “habitually placid, patient and calm” while Chaitanya was completely the opposite. Giving an example of Chaitanya’s Bijaswar or Nimai days, he claimed that Chaitanya would play very obscenely with the “young Brahmin girls who came to make offering to the Ganga.” But his most transgressive act was with Laksmi, the daughter of Ballavacharya. “This time,” Bezbaroa claimed, “the play was very serious (original in English).” “It was like Byron, Keats’ childhood love affairs erratic genius. (Original in English).” “At that stage”, he claimed, “Love at first sight and courtship…precocious (original in English) meaning love in the oriental style of courtship..”45 Of course, Bezbaroa would not stop. Giving a more elaborate, historical example of how Chaitanya’s dharma failed, he said, “Chaitanya preaching Radha-Krishna love implies the sringara rasa ( সব ৰস হৈছি শৃংগাছৰ অতিক মািুৰী)-the rasa intensified in porokriya rasa (পৰকীয়া ভাছব ৰতি ৰছসৰ উল্লাস।) after Chaitayna got out of hand and became a thing of most people’s irritation”46 But despite such lampooning of Chaityana and his porokriya bhakti, the devotees in Assam were continuously putting their creative and intellectual might into 44

Ambikagiri Raichudhuri, Durga Puja Asomiyar Kiya Jatiya Utsav Nohoy, Avahn, 2:11(1931), 1302. Laksminath Bezbaroa, ‘Sampradik Sankirnata,’, Bahi, 17: 4-5(1928), 555-56. 46 Bezbaroa, ‘Sampradik,’ 567. 45

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preaching Chaitanya’s porokriya bhakti in different forms. Radha Haran, first published in 1920, and subsequently published in different forms from different urban centres of Assam, this classic tract articulated the Radha-Krishna story in verse form. It is a story of lust, persuasion, and seduction. The focus is on Krishna’s lust for Radha and it ends in Radha’s ultimate surrender. Krishna’s elder brother, Boloram, too plays a pivotal role as the mediator in most of the plot, until an impatient Krishna decides to take control of the situation himself. As the narrative begins, Radha is introduced as the daughter of Chandra Ghosh, who is married to the chieftain king of Jayanti city, Abhimanya. We are told that Abhimanya was impotent, incapable of giving sexual pleasure to Radha. We are also informed that it was actually goddess Lakshmi of Baikuntha who was born as Radha. As Krishna is the incarnation of Lord Vishnu, the gods including Brahma schemed for the union of Radha and Krishna. The incidents of Radha Haran are sparked by their manipulation. Goddess Saraswati, in accordance with Brahma’s suggestion, visited Krishna in his dream in Radha’s disguise. As Krishna was be smitten by Radha’s beauty and overcome by sexual desire, she informed him -before vanishing that Radha is King Abhimanya’s wife. Balaram decided to visit Abhimanya’s palace as an astrologer to find out more about Radha. Following Boloram’s advice, Krishna struck Radha with Madana’s arrow in order to force her to follow him to Mathura. As Radha wished to visit Mathura, her mother-in-law immediately warned her about Krishna whose sexual prowess was already well known. In fact, the old woman herself was once overcome by desire for Krishna; she—a sixty-year-old woman—desired union with Krishna like a sixteen-year-old girl. In spite of the warning, Radha decided to visit Mathura along with her friend. As they arrived at Mathura, Krishna and Balaram were playing ghila with other lads of the area. As Krishna started a friendly banter with Radha, Balaram left the place with the other boys on some pretext. In between their banter, Krishna accused Radha of stealing his two ghilas. Radha vehemently refuted the accusation; as the 109

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conversation got a little heated Balaram re-entered the scene in the guise of an old man. Claiming to be a chieftain of six-seven villages with experience in resolving quarrels, Balaram offered his help to resolve their little feud. After listening to both the sides, Balaram asked Radha to take off her clothes so that Krishna could check whether she had stolen the ghilas. Krishna forced himself upon an enraged Radha. With the excuse of looking for the ghilas he touched her breasts. While he pretended to get scared by touching something like two beans in Radha’s chest, Balaram dissected them as two boils to be cured: He touched the breasts in her chest, And spoke these words to Bolo. There are two beans in her chest, And it makes me afraid.’ Bolo asks “what is there in your chest? Tell me beauty without any shame. Why don’t you use some medicine on these boils If they become inflamed, you will lose your life.47

Krishna then played the trick of finding the ghilas under Radha’s clothes and shamed her. To redeem her from the shame of being a thief, Krishna proposed one thing and was supported by Boloram. He told that he would forgive Radha, if she engaged in sexual intercourse with him that night; besides, it would be pleasurable to both of them and Radha could also learn all the sixteen hundred ways of love-making in which Krishna was an expert. However, Radha became more agitated and angry and left the place threatening to curse both Krishna and Boloram. Krishna, desperate with lust for Radha, further forced Balaram to devise ways to persuade her. The bulk of the narrative then focuses upon Boloram’s endeavours in various disguises—as a tree, a monster, an old man, a boatman—to either persuade or

47

Unnamed, Radhaharana (1920, Dibrugarh: Bhatachrya Agency, 1927), 16.

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trick Radha into Krishna’s arms. It resulted in Balaram getting a thrashing from Radha and her friend. An impatient Krishna then decided to take things into his own hands. He waited with a small boat by the riverbank disguised as a fat and dirty angler with a small piece of cloth on him. Radha and her friend, both clueless, arrived on the scene and conversed with the angler about his fishing; instead, he proposed both of them to stay with him and provide him with sexual pleasure. Radha did not take his words very seriously and asked him to help them to the other side of the river. Yet the lustful Krishna tried to grope Radha’s breast; in the middle of the river he got rid of whatever clothes he had and forced Radha too to use her clothes to plug a leakage in the boat. The boat sank in the river and they had to swim to reach the other bank. As Balaram reached the spot at that point and Radha left the scene. As Krishna’s desire remained unfulfilled, Balaram tried to play another trick in the guise of the astrologer. He persuaded the king to go out at night to perform a puja for the god Sani on the bank of the river for the well-being of his city. Radha was also promised that the king would return at midnight cured of his impotency. Accordingly, Krishna arrived at midnight in the guise of the king and consummated his desire for Radha. Radha was also gratified by this love-making. The God and Goddess were thus finally united through trickery Radha worshipped him as her husband Gobinda made love in sixteen hundred ways Both their joys knew no bounds48

However, the King sensed something wrong and arrived at his palace. A fight ensued between King Abhimanya and Krishna, in which the king lost his life. As Radha tried to commit sati with the king, Krishna was revealed as the lord Vishnu and the king was brought back to life. He was sent off as the gate-keeper to Vishnu’s Baikuntha.

48

Radhaharana, 52.

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One last strand of the story remains, which involves Radha’s total surrender. It occurs as Radha visited Mathura for one more time during market time. As she wanted to cross the river, she again found Krishna as the boatman in the riverbank. She offered to give Krishna her belongings in exchange of helping her cross the river; but in the middle of the river, Krishna again asked her for love-making. As it was turning dark, a fearful Radha finally succumbed to Krishna’s persuasion. Krishna created a riverine green island in the midst of the Jamuna River, so that they two could make love away from human habitation. The narrative ends with a description of Krishna’s sexual prowess and his expertise in ways to pleasure a woman. Radha proclaimed herself as his slave by the end of the story. However, as the narrative ends the narrator also reminds the reader to read, listen, and recite the text with devotion. He warns that whoever reads the text with lust in his mind, will find his place in hell. Listen you public, the narrative of Radha and Krishna Listening and reciting it will make you sacred Whoever will listen to it with lust He will sure fall in hell Whoever listens and recites it with devotion Will go to Baikuntha filled with joy Everyone take shelter in Krishna’s feet O Narayana, please, forgive all the sins of this world There is no other place than God’s feet All the people should recite Ram, Ram.49

It is doubtful that after reading such a seductive text, a distance is possible without “listening and reciting it with lust,” at least, for common, sansari individual. Pointing out such anxieties, Kanakalal Baruah declared that it might be the best bhava to pray before God. But for common people it was not very useful. Invoking a practice in

49

Radhaharana, 76.

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Bengal, he said, “readers who knew about the ‘Nera-neri’ of Bangadesh could relate the consequences of such bhava.” That is why, Baruah claimed, Sankaradeva and Madhavadeva, did not include Radha with Krisana for the “well being of Assam.” Instead, he claimed both gave priorities to sakhya and dasya bhava. Borua claimed, dasya and sakhya bhava are usuful for sansari devotees because the dhyan and madhura bhava devotees are usually monks who have given up society. Since the majority of the people are sansari, a bhava that could be practiced while living in the familial domain would be much more significant. Barua asserted, It is better to live in this world with a clear conscience and pure character rather than go on Banabasa. The knowledge seeking sanyasi lives in the absolute Brahma. In that self the sanyasi drowns both himself and the world. Though, the god of sansari bhakat’s is in the everyday, he is incarnated in this world. That is why the Bhakats does not renounce the world because it is also a part of God’s lila. For the Bhakatas of gyan marg, the absolute sadhana is the only way for mukti. But the ways for sansari bhakats are the namghar, somajghar, church, mosque, and kirtan nam, uposana, prarthana and prasanga etc, that is why the rituals of sansari bhakats’ dharma is both God oriented and society-oriented. Individual sadhana is not the actual norm of this marg. That is why rituals like samabota prasanga, nama singing, and recitation of kirtan by gathering in the public namghars, kirtan ghars, etc are important aspects of the Assamese Vaisnava community. With the help of taal and nagara and clapping of hands here nama kirtan singing is performed. The Bengali Vaisnava’s nagar sankirtan, dance, etc are not practiced by the Assamese Vaisnavites. Along with social prayer, family prayers are also done in individual households. That is why almost each and every household has a namghar in their homes.50

50

Kanaklal Borua, ‘Mahapurusiya Samprodiyar Dharmamata,’ Bahi, 3:8(1913),181.

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Such a structural relationship between Assamese Vaishnavism and the Assamese national subject, their somewhat non-interruptive familial commitment and devotion towards the God Vishnu, however, did one thing best—it developed a new understanding of Bihu and its elopement practices. Now, elopement was not an obscene, transgressive act, but a trustworthy practice through which the nation’s subject had chosen their partners and lived happily ever after without any blot or transgressive practices of “porokriya.” The stable foundation of the familial domain thus had a connection with Bihu, by selecting partners, by providing love and commitment to each other, these Assamese subjects would live happily in the pristine, beautiful landscape of Assamese village life for rest of their lives. The village namghar and the Bihu performances now had a connection—both had become essential tools for the sansari bhakats. The stability of sansar needed compitability between partners, through commitment, love and loyality they would live a happy life. Without the blot of porokriya, the euphoric Bihu nama actually expressed the love and commitment for one particular person. Here the desire was not lust, but inimitable, ever growing desire of love for each other. This desire would finally culminate into elopement and settling into a familial life. Such practices supplement each other-the Sansari bhakats at the same time giving commitments to his family, also could devote in the everyday recitation in the pracise of God. Both practices have actually supplement the familial. Interestingly, with such an understanding, now even a Satradhikar could think of writing a book on Bihu and elopement. The very foundation of the nation itself was determined by the significance of the existence of earthly love and other-worldly salvation. Published in 1928, Bolai Bahuli, written by Krishnanda Goswami of Dhohghora Satra of Nagaon had actually tried to articulate these two processes. By emphasizing two lovers, called Bolai and Bahuli, in the serene, beautiful village life, their love and commitment for each other and finally their elopement on the final night of the Bihu, Goswami tried to give a picturesque view of Bihu, Bihu nama and pristine order of love and elopement. The 114

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story starts with a secene where Bihuli gavaru was weaving “Bihuwan” in the front yard of her house. Bolai, her lover, sees this and by playing the pepa in the neighborhood, he was trying to get attention of Bahuli. Eventually, Bahuli heard him and had become excited and impassioned as she was weaving but she was unable to focus. Slowly the sun set and Bahuli with her friends went to fetch water from the river. On the river bank, her friends asked her to perform as she was the lead nachoni of village so that they could learn a few steps from her as the Bihu was around the corner. on their insistence, in a lonely place by the river side, Bihuli started to perform and her friends followed. Bolai, who was attending to his water buffalo nearby slowly came nearer to watch the performance of Bihuli. When the group realized that he was watching, the group dispersed. Their eyes met and Bolai left from the scene giving a subtle clue of pain. Everyone gathered again and after fethching the water they went home. However, Bahuli returned with a tamul in hand with an excuse to fetch water again. Bolai also returned after tethering his water buffalo. On the solitary river bank, they met each other. Bolai on the pretext of taking the tamul Embraces Bihuli Both bodies came together Bihuli was silent.51

Both chatted with tears in their eyes. During the conversation Bolai asked her when would she leave home and come to him finally. Getting the indication, Bahuli said that Bihu is coming. She wants to perform with her heart’s content for the last time. After this Bihu, she said, “I will stop taking responsibility of home and will become yours for rest of the life.” In the dark they parted, pondering the promises the made to each other. By seeing such devoted Love The lord of the World; blessed 51

Krishnanda Goswami, Bolai Bahuli (Calcutta: Author, 1928) 4.

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To such devoted love of a young man and woman Who would not pay heed?52

In the night, when she was preparing the bed, she asked her mother to buy her certain things from the Saturday market as Bihu was approaching and she was supposed to be the lead nachoni of the rati bihu nights. Goswami, giving a description of the embellishment process that Bihuli was thinking about and significance of a good performance of Bihuli in the rati Bihu nights, he articulated the importance of Bihu in the familial domain. Finally, the much waited Bihu day came. People were very happy, they called on each other, played traditional games during the day and finally in the evening the performed huchori in each village households. The huchori was started with “Dharama geet” with such intensity that everyone got touched by such rendition. After the “dharma geet”, the young man started to perform Bihu geet making an apology to forgive them if anything wrong came out during the rendition of the “yearly songs.” Goswami quoted Bihu after Bihu just to continue with the Bihu performance. Finally, in the next day, the rati Bihu was observed and Bihuli, during the whole seven night with her performance and beauty thrilled the audience. On the final night, just before dawn she saw that Bolai was waiting for her. He was getting excited and finally bidding her friends goodbye, and she retired from the Bihu. She was on her way home, when Bolai met her and both eloped. Goswami concluded, মুকতিমুৰীয়া বিাই তবৈুিী আনন্দৰ সীমা নাই, ডেকা গাভৰুৰ মিুৰ তমিন আক্তিছৈ ডকাছনন চাই?53

The elopement, court-ship, love making—the contaminated motifs of the Assamese nation now became something pure, constituents of the modern. Nabin Chandra

52 53

Goswami, Bolai,7. Goswami, Bolai, 41.

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Bordoloi, in his essay on Bihu in ‘Banhi,’ by displacing the rustic to “some people,” drew another fantasy of the pristine national world. It is indeed true that some people misuse the Bihu nama to show their animal like character. However, when one hears the Bihu-nama from the distant woods, he feels naturally as they say in English ‘the full-throated warbling’ in him. That means it feels like the beautiful song of a male bird who sings to invite his female companion. In the islets of the river Brahmaputra, by the sides of the river Subansiri, in the sands of the river Kollong, on the bank of river Dikhou, in the village paddy fields overshadowed by woods, the meetings and dances of the lads and lassees were the precious treasure of Assamese community life. This is when Assamese lads and lessees found a healthy, loving, brave companion for their life.74

74

Nabin Chandra Bordoloi, ‘Bihu,’ Banhi, 20:11(1931), 524.

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Organizing Celebrations: Labour, Leisure and Other Demands of Nationalism

BODY POLITICS

The Assamese have frequently been described as a degenerate and weakly race, and in these respects inferior even to their effeminate neighbours the Bengalis; but as a general description, it does not accord with the true state of the case. Though certainly inferior to the people of the Western provinces, yet in most points they seem as much removed above those of Bengali. In complexion they are a shade or two lighter coloured than the Bengalis. Their persons are in general short, robust, and active, when they choose to be so; but devoid of that grace and flexibility so peculiar to the Hindu. Their face flat, with high check bones, presents a physiognomy resembling the Chinese, and suggesting no idea

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of beauty. Their hair is abundant, black, lank, and coarse; but the beard is scanty, and usually plucked out, which gives the men an effeminate appearance.1

The idea that Assamese were effeminate, lazy and lack any moral capability for future growth were discursively articulated through different colonial discourses and material interactions around mid nineteenth century Assam. Different colonial policies and their articulation in the material domain constituted such ideas. But more interestingly, such new understanding of Assamese body or the subject itself had become commonsensical and both colonial and national discourses articulated it in terms of question of discipline, discursive production of social and the production of Assamese subject itself. In this section, we will trace the contours of such constitution through different colonial articulation and finally, in the late nineteenth century in the wake of relatively large metropolitan migration of Assamese youths for English education, how these new interactions constituted a new discursive regime over the question of female education, sartorial politics etc. This small survey would help us understand the structure of new nationalist festivals of 1920s and finally their influence over Bihu as a new urban celebration of nationalism. Let us go back to Robinson again. While men looked effeminate in appearance due to the “plucked out” beard, the women were “a striking contrast to men,” their “feminine beauty” was “great deal more” superior than the “women of Bengal” to such an extent “with a form and feature somewhat approaching the European.” But, he declared, the women of all ranks “go about in public, quite divested of that artificial modesty, practiced to such an extensive degree by native ladies in other parts of India.” 2 Such relative freedom was a warning sign of lack of moral character. Robinson expectedly claimed that both and particularly, “the women, to say the least,” were, “notoriously corrupt, and totally devoid of delicacy; their language is often gross and disgusting. Their terms of abuse and 1

William Robinson, A Descriptive Account of Assam (1841, Guwahati: Bhabani Print and Publication, 2011), 25455. 2 Robinson, A Descriptive, 255

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reproach are indelicate to the utmost degree.” Robinson did not want to disgust his reader by “mentioning any of them,” as “it is not possible for language to express, or the imagination to conceive, more indecent or grosser images.” In such context, Robinson declared that “if the voices of lying, deceit, dishonesty, and impurity in all its forms, can degrade a people, then the Assamese have sunk to the utmost depths of human depravity.” He claimed, “…whole pages might be written on this painful subject till the reader was perfectly nauseated with the picture of their disgusting vices.” 3 These voices of “lying, deceit, dishonesty and impurity” survived on a small diet. As Major John Butler claimed, “A little oil, rice, vegetables (such as greens and chillies) seasoned with smallest quality of salt, and sometime a few small fish, compose the humble fare of the poor peasant.” These necessaries, he declared, could be procurable, “for about three shillings per mensem, and as the wages of a day labourer or coolie are from one and a half to two annas per diem, or about two rupees per mensem, he has still one shilling to spare.” Such little, modest consumption would not help produce a masculine body. Butler making a connection between the content of the food and it’s influence over the Assamese body, finally declared, “This spare diet has, of course, its influence upon the stature and bulk of the Assamese; who are, consequently, slender, effeminate and indolent.”4 However, it was not just the food that made Assamese “effeminate and indolent,” but “the utter want of an industrious, enterprising spirit, and general degeneracy of the Assamese people, are greatly promoted by the prevalent use of opium.”5 The degraded practices of Assamese have been constantly in the discourse of Assam’s colonial history. The sparse population, the abundance of land for cultivation and above all the “few necessities” of the Assamese people were some of the major discursive assemblages upon which the body of the Assamese were produced in the mid-nineteenth century colonial Assam. The popular practice of opium 3

Robinson, A Descriptive, 275. John Butler, A Sketch of Assam with some Accounts of Hill Tribes (London: Smith, Elden and Co, 1847), 134. 5 Butler, A Sketch of, 34. 4

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consumption was articulated as the basis of Assamese peasants’ lethargic, indolent nature. In such context, Butler’s understanding of Assamese as “licentious, degraded race and appear (to be) degenerating rapidly” found a discursive affinity. He informed that despite the colonial administration’s “despair of the population increasing, or of their condition being ameliorated by education or the acquirement of more industrial habits,” he informed, “Numbers of children die annually, and the period of their existence seems diminishing. Few adults attain old age.” The problem was even these effeminate Assamese, “in time” might “intermarry with athletic Hill races.” But such new breeds, “unfortunately, on becoming partially civilized by mixing with and marrying Assamese, grow addicted to use of opium, and deprived us of the hope of a hardier or more enterprising race eventually springing up in Assam.”6 And still, “immense tracts of forest still remain untilled”, but faced with “apathy, want of enterprise, and few necessities of the people” Butler lamented that administration precluded to anticipate that the “Assamese will become a great trading people with the province of Bengal.” But, “as far as their effeminacy and want of energy will permit, however, it is satisfactory to find that they are in better circumstances than the peasantry in any other part of India,”7 The only way out, as Moffat Mills observed, to restrict the free supply of opium which was “injurious to the morals of the people”. Further, “Opium they should have, but to get it they should be made to work for it.”8 That means instead of their garden, they would have to purchase “government opium” from the market. Agreeing with Mills proposal in 1855, Butler himself expected that, “if a heavy tax were imposed on its cultivation, the drug would not be raised to such an extent...that Ryutts could not afford to purchase it.” And then, he claimed that, “the richer classes would then enjoy the luxury,” while the “mass of the people legging 6

Maj. John Butler, Travels and Adventure in the Province of Assam (1855, Guwahati: Bhabani Print, 2011), 181. Butler, Travels, 184-85. 8 A.J. Moffat Mills, Report on the Province of Assam, ed. Maheswar Neog, (1853,Guwahati: Assam Publication Board, 1984.), 19-20. 7

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gradually weaned from the habit by the increased taxation on opium, would...give it up altogether.”9 But such strategy also had another angle in such context of high price consumption; the lazy Assamese native would work seriously in the field or move towards the wage economy of labour scarce the tea gardens.10 This general account of the “self content” and lives with “few necessities” idea of Assamese people survived as commonsensical. By late nineteenth century the figure of the opium eating “Kania” had become popular as the symbol of lazy bodies of the Assamese. In fact, in 1894, the Royal commission on opium reiterated this discourse somewhat in a different manner when Upendra Nath Barooh informed the commission that most of the opium consumers were not “well to do.” In response the commission asked, “Are you aware that it has been reported on various occasions that owing to the fertility of the soil and the easy manner of obtaining a livelihood, they are well to do and on the whole well content?”11 But unlike the lazy, degraded figure of “Kania,” J. J. B. Driberg, a colonial official presented an altogether different picture of the “Kania”. Attributing a positive connotation on the figure of “Kania”, he said before the commission that: It might and it very often does mean that the man is a particularly good workmen; he has had his opium and is able to do more work than a man who has not had his opium. When I have been out shooting, if there was a different piece of tracking to do or anything of that sort, the men would say call “the kania, he knows best, he has had his opium and he will do it.”12

Such unbinding, somewhat fluctuating promise of transformation does one thing obviously as Upendra Nath Barooh relegated to the commission, “Everyone must have

9

Butler, Travels,180-81. Bodhisattva Kar, “Energizing Tea, Enervating Opium: Culture of Commodities in Colonial Assam,” in Space, Sexuality and Postcolonial Culture, ed. Manas Ray (Calcutta: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, 2002). 11 “Minutes of Evidence, Taken before the Royal Commission on Opium between 18th November and 29th December 1893,” Royal Commission on Opium, Vol-ii (London; Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1894) 12 “Minutes of,” 276. 10

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heard that it is opium that has gone to make man woman, and woman man, in Assam.”13 If opium makes a man, a woman and a woman, a man then the new sensitivity over women’s education was no less imperiling to the social, particularly the Assamese “dangoriyas” world. The emergence of elementary schools for girls, relative increase of metropolitan migration of Assamese young men to get English education and their new sensibilities over different issues was part of the generation of emerging Assamese publicists to engage in question like female education, question of women’s freedom, sartorial etiquette etc. 14 Satyanath Bora, in one of his satirical essays in Asam Bandhu defined it thus, “women education meant to learn to ‘write letters, engrossed in reading drama and novel’” to an extent that she would ignore the household works like “weaving, cooking etc.” Making a satirical articulation, he declared that it only helped in, “to make one restless,” corrupting but at the same time making a woman’s mind strong, helped them to ignore probable husbands, helped them to be forgetful of works that are meant for women, and the female education helped transform female into male. Bora, somewhat touching upon his poetic sensibilities declared that the female education actually, “makes flowers stone, transforms lake into desert.”15 Such delinquency against patriarchal values could not be ignored. There needed to be a perfect connection between familial ethics and women’s education. We will come to that. Bora’s explanation of women’s freedom was also centered on the same structure. Basically focusing on the so called disruption of the familial hierarchical relationship or its alteration, he claimed the major problems of women freedom included “not interested in marriage or getting divorce, visiting garden alone to get fresh air, meeting educated friend, terminate in-laws from home or forget to give food to them, made 13

Minutes of, 263. The number of primary Schools for girls was 44 in 1880-81 and at the close of the century it was 201 with, 3159 students. H.K. Barpujari, The Comprehensive History of Assam, Vol-5 (Guwahati: Publication Board of Assam, 2004), 201. 15 Satyanath Bora, “Sadanandar Natun Abhidhan,” Asam Bandhu, 1, no. 8 (1885): 269. 14

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husband cook.” Bora finally declared that “giving freedom to women means making her the mahout of the male elephant…etc.”16 For Bora, these were the perfect criteria for the declining spirit of Assamese middle class women. Ratneshwar Mahanta, the foremost critic of Assamese social, discussed the issue considerably in the pages of Asam Bandhu. Mahanta’s focus was the English educated youths and their different dealings with their wives. Criticizing the new ways of “dealing with wives” by the English educated husbands, Mahanta, in his essay “Swadhinata ne Sesasaswar” declared that the older conception of wives was more glorious than today. Somewhat making a nostalgic redemption of older society, he claimed that without any education, only with training of the elders, particularly from the mother-in-laws, the wives would make life happy and fulfilling. He said, “their devotion for elders, loyalty for religion, devotion for work and commitment for their family were so glaring that if one remembers it makes him happy.”17 The problem was, as Mahanta articulated without any experience and proper training under “in-laws”, the English educated husbands gave unlimited freedom to their immature wives which eventually disrupted the hierarchical status of household and made the wife “above her in-laws.” Such practice was degrading. It might be possible, he explained, she would go through some sort difficult period when she was in training under the elders of the household but such difficulty could be ignored as it made her mature enough to take responsibility of the household. Refuting the discourse of “freedom,” he explained that the “work” of the wives was a celebrated part of being a wife, because due to her work, “a tired man gets his leisure, the hungry gets to eat, the thirsty gets water! How could I say she is restricted or bounded with these works.” Giving examples of the mythological characters like Sabitri, Sita, Sakuntala etc., “Aryan women,” he claimed were not bounded or put in confinement. Rather their “bhakti for husband, respect for elders, 16 17

Bora, “Sadanandar”: 269. Ratneshwar Mahanta, “Swadhinata ne Swesasaswar,” Asam Bandhu, 1,no. 4 (1985): 142.

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their ingenuity for managing the household tremendously purified their life, with heavenly blessings their life became immortal!” That is why, he claimed, “Sabitri was prayed by everyone, Sita was regarded as god Laksmi!”18 No need to tell the reproduction of such ideal women confirmed the patriarchal reward if one followed such glaring examples. His second essay named “Ghyanir Kartaba Aru StriSiksha”” (responsibility of wife and female education) he reproduced the same familial ideas. Claiming that the objective of male and female education should be different, he argued, that it was not worthy to make woman a clerk in the court. Rather the objective of the male education was “mainly for earning and maintaining the household.” But he explained that could not be the objective of the female education. In his opinion, the main objective of female education was how to improve familial life. He declared the husband from outside should “resolve the issues of outside, while at home, the wife will resolve the issues of children, give food to the other members of the family, will manage the servants etc.”19 He declared “wife as the essence of the family or the internal power of the family.” Giving some kind of agency, for the first time, to the “wife,” he advised “husbands,” that before interfering with the internal matters one should be very careful.” He finally concluded that “how many novels one could read or write did not determine the quality of wives.” The ethics of waking up early in the morning, doing household works, cooking food for the husband were some of the major criteria that Mahanta seems infatuated with.20 In an anonymous article title “Dasiyo Parishad” published in the first issue of the journal Asam Bandhu in 1885, the writer tried to critique the existing sartorial trends in Assam. Mainly focusing against the English educated young men, the essay articulated four basic objectives of a dress code. He described, “first it secures one from cold, second, secures the body from outside dust, heat of the sun etc, thirdly secures from Mahanta, “Swadhinata,” : 141. Ratneshwar Mahanta, “Ghyanir Kartaba Aru Stri Siksha,” Asam Bandhu, 1, no. 6 (1885), 192. 20 Mahanta, “Ghyanir,” : 193. 18 19

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shame and finally the fourth, it makes one look handsome.” Giving such utilitarian understanding of dressing, he argued that one should wear dresses on these objectives basing on the specific tradition of a particular nation and seasons. “The dress of winter is inadequate for the summer and vice versa…the dresses of temperate countries are inadequate for tropical countries. The dresses of tropical should be comfortable, light and sweat absorbing,”21 he argued. Bearing this in mind, the contemporary sense of dress code among the Indian men, particularly their fashion of wearing “English Dresses,” might help, them look handsome, he argued, but was not good for their health. The sartorial question was not just a health issue, as he elaborated, “wearing English dresses one could not be identified whether he is from outside or a local.” Justifying that “every country has their own dresses or dress code,” and on the basis of that they are identified, he finally claimed that in Assam, this issue was as confusing as from dresses, it was difficult to identify “whether they are sahib, or half sahib or half Muslim.”22 In the case of women, he claimed that the issue was satisfying until then. But, “sadly today many educated Assamese young men tried to corrupt the dress code of their wives.” Instead of “mekhela and reha,” he claimed that they were being asked to wear sari, despite the resistance of the Assamese women community. Relegating the problems of sari, he claimed that even the “bhadra” Bengalis were recognizing the problems of sari.He even confirmed that one “knowledgeable” Bengali distinctly said that “mekhela and reha” were much better than sari. Giving a somewhat utilitarian argument he also said that “today many Assamese women wear kurta under the reha, which resolved whatever little problem one has with reha.” He, finally, giving acontemporary example from Bengal declared that, “in fact, many Bengali women stopped wearing sari but unfortunately”, he lamented,, “ our educated youths still

21 22

Unnamed, “Dasiyo Parisad,” Asam Bandhu, 1, no. 1 (1885) : 17. Unnamed, “Dasiyo,”: 18.

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shamefully continued to be taking interest in sari.”23 Interestingly, he declared, he did not have problem if ‘one followed the dress code of European women.” Because, he thought, ‘those dresses are impeccably good and gracious and these dresses actually realized the objective of wearing dress.”24 However, responding to the essay, Ratneshwar Mahanta revised the author’s understanding of male dress from a very different perspective. Questioning the idea of national sartorial itself, he questioned if there were any particular characteristics of Assamese male dress code which one could recognize as Assamese. In fact, claiming that there was no particular characteristic of Assamese dress code or for that matter in India as such; different historical influences, reign of different Kings, actually produced varied characters of Indian dresses which could not be specified or standardized.25 But he recognized that same confusions still remained in Europe. There was no particular, recognizable dress code that identified a person with his particular belonging to a nation. 26 On the question of female dress code, however, he agreed with the authors in all accounts except his opinion about the European dress code. Mahanta was interestingly not very adverse to the dress but invoked another notion of work and discipline alongside dresses and their relationship with the women’s everyday familial activities. He declared that the problem with European dresses was that they were meant for idle life but since “our women” had to work and never got any chances to sit idle, the “gown” was not meant for them. The “reha-mekhela”, however, he said, was related to the everyday life of a “wife,” and this fundamental connection between work and dress code should be remembered.27 Such a connection between discipline, ideas of responsibility and the emerging sartorial politics would find a new specific, performative acceptance when in the 1920s through some new festivals, the Assamese nation, would try to erase its effeminate subjects, as Unnamed, “Dasiyo,”: 19. Unnamed, “Dasiyo,”: 19. 25 Ratneshwar Mahanta, “Asomiya Aru Bideshi Saj” Asam Bandhu, 1, no.8, (1885) : 284-85. 26 Mahanta, “Asomiya,” : 285. 27 Mahanta, “Asomiya,” : 287. 23 24

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well as constitute, re-produce disciplinary mechanisms over the popular through certain new festival codes and most importantly the consolidation of patriarchal power within its new fantasy of national subjects.

NEW FESTIVALS:

Probably in the summer of 1922, Hemchandra Gowsami had been transferred to Jorhat….then nobody wanted to listen to any public activities on literature …except the non-co-operation movement; nobody wanted to listen to anything. …. Gosain (Hemchandra Gowsami) and I decided that since people did not turn up for meetings on literature, they might show up for tea parties. Mixing nam and tea party, we organized a new programme and invited people…I said nam because with tea and other food items, we also gave sprout mah, sugar cane, coconut etc. There was no scheduled programme as such..We talked about everything under the sun… we all enjoyed the function so we decided to continue it.28

Wrote, Sarat Chandra Gowsami, the long serving general secretary and one of the major architects of Asom Sahitya Sabha in 1920s. It seemed the thrill and excitement of being in a procession of non-cooperation movement was much more interesting than listing to the dull rendition of literary texts sitting in proscenium etiquette of Asom Sahitya Sabha sessions. The issue of exotic or at least, its spectacular paraphernalia had returned to every nationalist strategy of articulating a new festival. The innate tension between spectacular and the nationalist idea of disciplining the national body was flaunting in every membrane of festivals, programmes appropriated and articulated by the nationalist discourse. Two pattern of festivals became popular in 1920s, first the hero Saratchandra Gowsami, “Sahitya Sabhar Katha,” in Saratchandra Gowsami Rachanavali, ed. Jatindranath Gowsami (Jorhat: Asom Sahitya Sabha, 1987), 163-64.

28

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remembrance festivals in the wake of non-cooperation movement such as Lachit Diwvas, Joymoti Utsav and second the Sanmilonis such as Bihu festivals, Sahitya Sabha and other literary and cultural programmes. However, the “conceptual unity” of these festivals produced a dictum; a sense of dullness that needed the urge of an exotic grace. Thus the new idea of festival had to be enumerated, produced and dissipated. For instance in the fifth Jorhat session of the Asom Sahitya Sabha in 1920, the president of the organizing committee, Radhakanta Handique stressed, “Many diverse and different festivals are observed on the earth for fun and pleasure. Like that we also gathered here in Jorhat to observe the fifth sanmilon festivals of Assam Sahitya Sabha…”29 This kind of stress on pleasure, on fun and on happiness in a literary activity was nothing but an attempt for giving a new association of exotic spectacular within the different nationalist projects. Thus the perpetual use of the word utsav (festival) in different organizations of sanmilonis or in the occasion of hero remembrance was calculative and strategic. At least, that was the strategy to fix the exotic within this new imagination of the national popular. The strategic significance of the term utsav was vividly described by Hirawati Gohain Barua, the wife of literature Padmanath Gohain Barua in her presidential speech of Joymoti Utsav in 1929 in Tezpur. Despite her insistence on the word tithi, the Assamese word that bears the meaning of the death anniversary of the neo-vaisnavite preachers, in the Joymoti utsav celebration, she finally adopted a middle path by fixing both the word utsav and tithi with the day of Joymoti death anniversary. She said, Today is the death anniversary of mahasati Joymati. On this big day, mahasati Joymoti went for her heavenly abode and we are gathered here to remember her sacrifice….for us, for whole of India and the world, it is an auspicious day...Many people celebrate it as a day of festival. I do not have much

29

Radhakanta Handique, quoted in Atul Chandra Hazarika, Asom Sahitya Sabhar Ruprekha (Jorhat: Asom Sahitya Sabha, 1977), 34.

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problemsto call it a festival. Seeing the significance of its observation, it is not wrong to call it a festival. Because the exemplified sacrifice of Joymoti would give us strength to become great and that is why the remembrance gives us immanence joy. Thus based on that example we are celebrating it as festival. Though it is not wrong, but by calling it a festival we cannot express the true depth, the melancholia attached to this day. That is why instead of festival, tithi may be the appropriate word for it. Probably for the day of advent the term utsav and for day of departure tithi would be the appropriate term-because the day of advent makes one happy and while the day of a person’s departure makes one sad. Moreover, the bhakti bhabo becomes more solid when we call it tithi. That is why traditionally people celebrated the day of advent and departure as tithi from ages, however there is no example of such in modern festivals. If the birth and death anniversary of mahapurushs and mohanaris are observed as tithis from time immemorial, who should have a problem to call world’s inimitable woman Joymoti’s death anniversary as tithi?...though we cannot ignore the importance of the word utsav so I think it should be better if we call it as ‘joymoti tithi utsav.’30

Baruani was trying for an ascetic, spiritual appropriation of Joymoti with other worldly saintly status by elevating her to the stature of the neo-Vaisnavite preachers of the precolonial time. But this spiritual, ascetic appropriation did conflate with the exotic possibility of the word utsav. Her detailed, intricate argument actually tried to fix, resolve the tension between exotic and the spiritual. Padmanath Gohain Barua concurred with it, in his presidential speech in Sibsagar, the main centre of attention of Joymoti Utsav, recounting Baruani’s speech, he said that he was satisfied that the Tezpur and Sibsagar committees were using both the terms. However, for Gohain Borua, the term tithi had another strategic utility. He argued in the same speech, We are very disheartened that the government has not been announced state holiday on this important, universal ‘tithi utsav’ day. It is wrong on the part of 30

Hirawati Gohain Baruani, “Joymoti Tithi,” Ghar Jauti, 2, no.10 (1929): 538.

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government if they have taken it as a general, non-significant festival. I think it would be best to take it as one of the first categories festival of the state. To our satisfaction, the government now liberally announces holidays on the death anniversary of the mahapurushas of Assam. I think taking Joymoti tithi utsav too in that category, government should announce holiday on this auspicious day. I urge this organizing committee to submit their proposal to the government in this direction again.31

The incarnation of Joymoti in nationalist discourse was many folds. Approximately, in a span of hundred years, the story of Joymoti was retold in many different forms. From lengthy eulogies to the first Assamese film in 1935 in nationalist circle this Ahom royal woman generated considerable amount of interest. As the story goes, in the oppressive regime of Lara Raja of Ahom dynasty, Jaymati was taken to somewhat of an inquisition to enquire the whereabouts of her husband, Gadapani, a contender to the throne. But for the safety of her husband and the nation, Jaymati did not budge. Receiving fourteen days of numerous tortures, finally she sacrificed her life but had not uttered a single word. Even when her brave husband, Gadapani in disguise returned and suggested that she reveal the whereabouts, she refused. Padmanath Gohain Barua in his presidential speech narrated the incident in more intricate, dramatic detail emphasizing the fantasy relationship between the devoted wife and her swami guru. The brave Gadapani unable to see her pain returned in disguise of a Naga. He asked her, “O, woman, tell the whereabouts of your husband and save yourself.” But Jaymati even refused that advice of her swamiguru, with humility and bhakti, saying

31

Padmanath Gohain Barua, “Presidential Speech” Ghar Jauti, 3, no.10 (1930): 918.

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“I have repeatedly said, I will not tell the whereabouts of my husband, meaning I will not tell. Who has asked you to come here! Why do not you leave immediately?”32

Exploiting the growing discontent, Gadapani finally overthrew Lora Raja and ascended to the throne. Her son Rudra Singha, who succeeded Gadapani, later transformed the land where she was tortured into a lake which is now called Jaysagar located in the heart of Sibsagar town. The bank of Jaysagar became the new catalyst of Jaymoti Utsav. Such example of a woman, the sacrifice of a devoted wife to her husband and the greater cause of the nation needed to be celebrated, disseminated as the idealist version of nation’s familial structure. Fluctuating between worldly and other worldly, between myth and history, between spectacular and every day, Jaymati now embodied “all the good qualities of the human kind” as Padmanath in the concluding part of his speech declared. Assamese nation’s fantasy of femininity was clearly articulated in Padmanath’s speech. Jaymati was not just the ideal wife, but her quality was consistent in multiple ways of her life and deeds. “She was the world’s ideal woman,” Padmanath claimed, because, in her young days, she was (Jaya aidau), “the ideal example of a young girl.” An ideal example of a “daughter-in-law, an ideal example of a hero’s wife and an ideal example of a hero’s mother.” So there were no fluctuations or weaknesses; a disciplined consistency was after all what the nation wanted from its women. But despite her larger role in a royal family, she was still “an ideal wife, ideal homemaker and an ideal mother.” Gohain Baruah claimed, “she was still politically committed, considerate and sensible to her subjects and was a patriotic royal woman.” This balance between the domain of political and social was important desirable feminine virtue, where one retains her virtue of a feminine subject even when she is outside of that teritory Padmanath stressed finally that “the sattitva of Jaymati, the moral understanding of Jaymati, self respect of Jaymati have no precedence in the world32

Gohain Barua, “Presidential Speech”: 915.

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Jaymati is the world’s ideal woman.” Such an intricate balance, ingenious abilities of multitasking, of course, remained alofty example. Such fantastic, multifaceted ideals needed to be idealized. Articulating the basic crux of the nationalist strategy, Padmanath declared, “Making obeisance to Jaymati is similar to idolizing all the good qualities of human kind. Therefore, by observing the death anniversary of Mahasati Jaymati-we are offering prayers to all the good qualities of the world.” It was almost natural then that the contemporary subjects of the Assamese nation needed to embody such virtues, particularly the Assamese women, to produce a new, ideal familial domain. There was no split between familial and the national domains. Like Jaymati with her idealized feminine qualities, who sacrificed for her husband and the nation. Thus, finally, Gohain Baruah, hoped that The inimitable qualities of Jaymati may help us to win, by the example of Jaymati- the Assamese nation may reemerge from its slumber and destitution. Let the devoted wife of Gadapani be an example, may her sawami bhakti inspire the Indian women community; let the patriotic mahanari’s sacrifice inspire the slumbered, and destitute Assam reemerge, let her sacrifice inspire the three million Indian people.. ..33

But how could the inimitable sacrifice and devotion of Jaymati be disseminated through the new Jaymati tithi festival? What would be the structure of the festival be sothat it could bring together both the sense of feminine discipline and the spectacular sense of exotic? The Sibsagar Mahila Sanmiloni had some answers. Detailed report in Ghar Jayuti in 1929 delineated the structure of the programme. This year also the Sibsagar Mahila Sanmiloni organized the Jaymati utsav and celebrated near the Horo-Gauri Doul on the bank of Jaysagar pond on first April, 1928, Sunday, sukla dasami tithi. In fact, the sukla dasami tithi was on Sunday but thinking about the convenience of the people, the day was shifted to

33

Gohain Barua, “Presidential Speech,”: 919.

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Sunday…like other years the men did not help much. Festivals main help Sri Radhikanath Sharma turned up days before the festival.34

Despite the stress on ‘Tithi” or its corresponding connection with the Indian calendarical time, for practical purposes the nation could not avoid the colonial calendar. The demand for holidaying was not just nationalizing an event or a particular strategy of nationalist discourse through the colonial administrative consent. It was also for convenience, the convenience of its subject. Sibsagar Mahila Sanmiloni’s eye for ‘the convenient’ did one thing, at least, for that year; the “tithi utsav” became spectacular. As the report informed, people arrived at the site, the pristine site, where Sati sacrificed herself for her husband and well-being of the nation, in the evening hours of the Saturday from neighboring towns like Jorhat etc. They camped there for the night, cooked, ate and stayed reciting in the memories of sati Jaymati. A devoted, spiritual pilgrimage finally started next day, the 19th of Sot, Sunday, when hundreds of people turned up from different places of Assam in the early morning and bathed in the pristine water of the Jaysagar pond. Like any pilgrimage, they cooked and ate at the site. The narrative of such a spectacular, spiritual, devoted scene of the site disrupted only by the “young boys boat racing” in the pure water of the Jaysagar, work to remind us that a nationalism was operating beneath all the cacophony of spiritualism. Articulation of daring masculinity through different sports was now a new strategy and nationalism could in no way avoid it even at the cost of its disruptive potentiality of spiritualism. But that was why nationalism preferred the contrasting, contradictory term “tithi” and “utsav” together. With the spiritual there was needed a grace of exotic. As the report informed, the meeting started in the afternoon. “With gayan-bayan, showing other usual respect, the president of the meeting Garmuriya Sattradhikar pravhu Pitambar Deva Gowsami was welcomed.”35 Deva Gowsami, the celebrated

34 35

“Sibasagart Jaymoti Thithi Utsavr Bibaran,” Ghar Jauti, 1, no. 10 (1928): 198. “Sibasagart Jaymoti Thithi Utsavr Bibaran,” Ghar Jauti, 3, no. 10 (1930): 199

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Sattradhikar of Garmaur Satra was also welcomed by the gathering crowd “with Joy and showing respect to him.” Eventually, the gathering increased to an extent that “the organizing committee was unable to provide any space. From Jaydoul to Hara-Gauri Doul, the whole area was filled with people, cars, shops etc.” Reportedly, “minimum ten to eleven thousands people were gathered on the occasion. From Sadiya to Guwahati, from all the corners of Assam people came to participate in the festival.” Along with usual speeches, remembrance of Sati, there were “cultural programs” in between. Singing, poem recitation, small scenes from different plays on Jaymati would help break the monotony of the meeting and continued to excite the gathering crowd. Emphasizing on the emotional response generated by the different cultural programs, the report described the performance of a song by the girl students in biya nama sur. “the song was performed in biya nama sur and then offered flower in Jaysagar in memory of Jaymati just after the performance. It created ripples in the hearts of the gathering..” The intelligent use of biya nama the Assamese wedding songs, it’s sad articulation of departure, articulation of bride’s bidding adieu to her parental home was synonymous to Jaymati’s sacrifice. Particularly, a new kind of embodied probability was structured between the spirit of Jaymati and the discourse of feminine sacrifice.36 The Sattradhikar, in his speech, with other things also requested the gathering to establish a girls’ school in memory of Jaymati on the bank of Jaysagar. The programme reached its peak when four pats or scenes were displayed with a narration by some Radhikanath Sharama. The scenes were especially ordered from Dhaka. With the sensible narration of Mr Sharma, the scenes, one after another, had unfolded the life, determination and devotion of Jaymati. The voice narration, the report said, was so heart touching that the audience wept. Sharma, in his concluding remark, linking Jaymati with mythological story of “Sakti or Sati” said that, “the way the Sakti pithas were made through the organs of Sati,

36

“Sibasagart Jaymoti Thithi Utsavr Bibaran,”: 198

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the Jaysagar or the Jaya-khetra was also a pristine place where all the flesh and bones of Jaymati remained.”37 The meeting continued for another hour or so with unbroken attention of the large gathering. This celebration of a Sati, her feminine virtue and her highest sacrifice, the attempt to invoke new particularities, a new significance of the Assamese woman: the nation’s demand for abilities of multitasking, virtue of feminine sacrifice. The way it was celebrated in a middle class urban space, hardly had any connection with the structure of any traditional festivals, particularly with Bihu. But, the middle class sensibilities, their aesthetic understanding of exotic and spectacular and the particularity of this new festival code would eventually influence and control the traditional festivals. We will come to that soon. However, in the distant villages, particularly along Congress networks, with the help of other community organizations, instead of new code of aesthetic spiritualism, the usual codes of thiti celebration were appropriated. The Na-Douar branch of Ahom Sabha, the Ahom community organization celebrated the Jaymati tithi utsav on 12th sot, Monday of 1934 in Magurmara village of Na-Douar area. Like any other tithi celebration of different vasnavite preachers, Jaymati was also remembered, offered obeisance through nam prasanga and other respective modules of offerings. A report in Asomiya informed that on that occasion, the procession in the morning, nam prasanga at noon, meeting in the afternoon and Rasayatra bhaona in the night were performed. In the meeting, with usual speeches and readings, Congress leader, Sri Lakhiprasad Gowsami gave an inspirational speech. Mentioning the poor participation of women folk in the occasion, he urged them to come forward and lead the ceremony and help producing Sati Jaymati in every household.38 (Congress appropriation of Jaymati festival or for that matter, attempts to maintain a cautious balance between the traditional and a little imposition of the new aesthetic codes was a very interesting phenomenon that alerted the aesthetic 37 38

“Sibasagart Jaymoti Thithi Utsavr Bibaran,”: 200 Sri Maniram Handique, “No-Douar Ahom Sabha,” Asomiya, Bohag 15, 1934: 4.

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codes of both the traditional festivals and the new, but, at least, an attempt was made to differentiate between the new middle class festivals with the festivals observed in the rural areas. We will come to that soon. First let us look at how another Assamese hero was invoked, reproduced and celebrated at that time. He was Lachit Barphukan, the legendary commander of the battle of Sarighat. Like Jaymati, however, he was no myth. At least, the Assamese medieval chronicles elaborately endorsed his name in the war of Sarighat, a celebrated war, according to Assamese nationalism, where the might of the great Mughal force was destroyed by the Assamese warriors under his brave leadership. The gallant virtue of Lachit Barphukan, his masculine might, his deep commitment and loyalty to the nation now needed to be celebrated through a festival called “Lachit Divas.” The significance of Lachit in nationalist strategies was clearly drawn by historian S.K.Bhuyan in 1947, when he attempted “an intensive and scientific study of a period of Assam history entering round the leading personality.”39 The Assamese people have now fallen on evil days and their present condition is a poor index of their past achievements. To show the heights to which the Assamese mind could soar under the storm and stress of the national ordeal I have reproduced the utterance of the leaders as preserved for us in the folios of the ancient Buranjis. The ideals enshrined in these utterances and the plans and measures adopted in consonance therewith will demonstrate that Assamese leadership was not deficient in the qualities which ensure the solidarity and stability of a nation. These qualities are in greater demand now than before as many complex political, economic and social problems are waiting for solutions by us as Indians in our coming role of an independent nation.”40

Of course, Bhuyan’s “scientific study” endorsed the claim of Lachit Barphukan and the Assamese nation’s gallant achievement against the mighty Mughal force and confirmed 39

Preface, xii. S.K.Bhuyan, Lachit Barphukan and His times, A History of the Ahom-Mogul conflicts of the period of 1867 to 1871 A.D. (Gauhati: Government of Assam in the department of historical and Antiquarian Studies, 1947), xi-xii. 40

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the masculine instinct of its subject and would definitely inspire the nation in the post colonial time. But from 1920s onwards in the vernacular domain, the reincarnation of Lachit and the war of Sarighat were inspiring the Assamese nation, which in the wake of congress mobilization wanted to shed off its old discursive appendage like effeminacy, lethargy, and opium induced depression. And above all it wanted to reproduce itself through the example of Lachit Barphukan and war of Sarighat as a masculine race. Jayeeta Sharma argued that, “the Lachit Diwas celebration” was “much more localized, failing to spread much further than their epicenter at Chiring Gaon, even within upper Assam.” Sharma thinks that it was so because that “the image of Jaymati fitted much more easily into the dominant Gandhain nationalist mobilization at the time”41 Of course, in dominant Gandhian thematic Lachit, the Assamese warrior did not find much endorsement, but it would be misleading to argue that Lachit did not gain mobility. Actually, strategically Lachit was used in a different way than Jaymati, particularly, in a way it operated outside of the Congress mobilization. Jaymati’s celebrated saintly status was much more “cultural,” “literary” and fluctuated between feminine virtue and performative principles of Assamese language strategy, while Lachit was articulated, grounded in or through the “material”, “rustic” paraphernalia of Assamese social life. It is not important that the articulation of masculinity always has to be synonymous to the articulation of racial superiority. The masculine itself can be symptomatic to other strategies such as agricultural production, economic superiority etc. That is why Lachit had not appeared dominantly in the urban, middle class gatherings, except in some sporting adventures of amateur student activities or in nonstructured Bihu observations. Lachit was always mobilized in local, non-urban level gatherings, in melas, sporting and gymnastic exhibitions in order to counter the effeminate, lethargic body of Assamese village folks. The Lachit diwas of 1934 in Jaji is

41

Jayeeta Sharma Heroes for our Times: Assam’s Lachit, India’s Missile Man. (Place: Publisher, Year), 20.

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interesting in this regard, in terms of how it strategically used both the questions of discipline, while at the same time maintaining the idea of spectacular as can be seen from its programme structure. Lachit Mela was observed in Jaji in upper Assam for three days just after the magh Bihu. A detail report published in Asomiya in 26th January in 1935 narrated the spectacular gathering in the “Jamaguri Sapori” and how it became the pristine pilgrimage space during the three days of its celebration. Along with local participation, the report said, “people from Tiyak, Hatigarh, Jorhat, Mariani, Nazira, Namti, Kalugaon, Sibsagar etc joined in.” The visit from different places confirmed its wide reach and the universality of the festival. The first day was started with some spiritual performances like Bishnu puja, Sobah, Nam-kirtana, Gayan-byan etc to confirm some kind of spiritual affinity to it. After that “the sea of masses” came to the ground to celebrate the festival. Around 12 noon, as the report said, “The employee from Agriculture department, members of the mela committee and leading personalities gathered in front of the exhibition and agriculturalist Rai Sahab Sri Narayan Chandra Barua inaugurated the exhibition with a sort but insightful speech.” The link between agricultural exhibition and the medieval Lachit Barphukan was drawn through the sound of hiloi, the medieval cannon. The report informed, “With the sound of hiloi, the exhibition was open up for public. People in large scale started to enter in the exhibition space.”42 A detail report by its secretary published in Asomiya on 26th January, 1934 indicated the significance of the exhibition. The participation of the “agricultural, weaving and sericulture department”, in the exhibition and their mobilization for the exhibition helped in collection of different items from different distant areas like “Golaghat, Borpathar, Deargaon, Majuli, Jorhat Sibsagar etc.” Along with other agricultural items, different vegetable, fruits, local food items, good quality local fertilizers etc were also exhibited.”43 The experts from the agricultural department 42 43

Asomiya, January 26, 1935. 4. Asomiya, January 26, 1935.4.

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also instructed the gathering about different diseases of vegetables, made them aware of harmful insects etc.” In art and craft, local art and craft were shown including “Assamese blacksmith’s modern razor and the comb made of elephant tusk,”. These were the significant items of the programme. The sericulture and Textile department showed modern techniques of weaving and also showed different silk strings etc. Among the participant, some were selected for their agricultural items. Interestingly, the Garmuriya Sattradhikar of Majuli was selected for his achievement in producing good quality molasses. The exotic was not just limited to the agricultural achievements but, as another report indicated, one Krisna Nath Thakur’s clay made statue of Royal Bengal Tiger got serious and excited response from the spectators. Along with bhaona and theatre, the puppet dance of Loknath Gowsami of Jokai sattra was also one of the memorable episode of the mela. The main meeting of the programe was held on the second afternoon, with usual songs, speeches and readings, even an essay on Lachit Barphukan was read out sent especially by historian S.K.Bhuyan. One of the important decisions of the meeting was that instead of observing the Lachit Diwas on the purnima of Magh month, a Sunday in the middle of the Sot month should be chosen. On the final day, the names of the selected participants were read out and it was also decided that a Krisak Sanmilon in Jaji would be soon organized. The connection between Lachit, agricultural production, and rural folk at large was the new discursive affinity that in the wake of the National movement, and the Assamese nation wanted to use the observation of Bihu towards this end. But in the wake of large scale mobilization for congress gatherings, particularly when the rustic, rural masses needed to be organized andused in different congress programs, at least, in congress structured programs, Bihu’s presence had become immanent to cater to need of these gatherings as well. Congress mobilizations, the structured programs were not outside of codes of the new festivals of 1920s and 30s but despite their conceptual connection, the disciplinary ethics were subverted in order to spread its base. Published in Abahan in 1931, detailed news 140

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on the programs of “Gandhi week” in Golaghat confirmed how the question of exotic and spectacular was appropriated in order to mobilize different sections of the population. The seven days programme was spectacular and strictly followed the congress policies. The processions with slogans, the national flag hoisting ceremony, picketing in different exercise depots against opium, huge public meetings and finally, on the seventh day, a huge meeting was organized in the maidan. As the news reported, “on 8th afternoon, in the maidan, there was a huge public meeting. Sri Rajandra nath Baruah had presided the meeting. In the meeting-the shops of pitha pana, tea stall, bhaona, Miri dance, Kusti, lathi-khel, sward playing, puppet dancing etc were also made it spectacular.”44

A NEW BIHU:

My dear Raij, Today we have to prepare ourselves for our self-defense. From our past glories to our “Jatiya bhaba”, “national festival” –all were about to go into the oblivion of forgetfulness. If we would not have been conscious, our fate could have been like western Kamrup. But fortunately, today things have changed. Today, in each and every town, in every household there is new inspiration, new schedules for future. Once by following the town’s men, the Assamese villagers had also stopped observing Bihu festival. But now the situation has reversed. Now realizing their rootless condition, the town’s men are starting to follow the villagers. Town’s men realized that there is nothing to identify them if they visit other states of India. In our homes, the women’s “national sartorial” and villagers’ head turban only are retaining the Assamese identity.45 44

Abahan, Kati, 1853 Saka, third year, 1st issue: 14. Shailadhar Rajkhowa Rachanavali, ed. and comp. Dr Manjumala Das (Guwahati: Lawyer’s Book Stall, March 1992), 388, 389 (originally published in Abahan, 6th year, 7th issue, 1935). 45

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Thus spoke Shailadhar Rajkhowa in his presidential speech in the 1935 Bihu sanmiloni in Tezpur. Narrating this recent trend of observing Bihu festivals in urban areas, Rajkhowa said that in his home town Dibrugarh from “uruka” days Bihu was celebrated. Narrating the structured, scheduled programme, he informed the gatherings that “From that day onwards different sporting competitions, art and craft exhibitions of women were held” And, “from the Bihu days” from respected citizens to school going children all joined in house to house “huchori performance.” The huchori performance continued for six days and finally, on the seventh day observed Bihu Sanmiloni “where dances and singing, bohuwali, bhoana etc were performed and through these they bid adieu the Bihu for that year.” Rajkhowa drawing a similarity between the “towns’ and village” observation of Bihu, declared, “the villagers in the villages also bid adieu to Bihu on that day.” Keeping this structural, cultural similarity, colonial official Rajkhowa narrated his experience of Sibsagar villages. “The same way Bihu was also observed in Sibsagar. In huchori there is hari nam. We cannot say this ritual is bad as once in year giving blessing by visiting every household is not a bad custom.” However, keeping somewhat a balance position between Bihu performance and the question of obscenity or rusticity in it, he endorsed the performance but stressed on the need for a little revision so that it could have contemporary relevance. He said, “Along with huchori, the young men’s bihu dance performance through the jungle rhythms is also not bad. But, I believe, for the general people, the primitive bihu dance, Bihu geet should be updated making it more relevant for the contemporary time.” His narration of different rituals of observation of Bihu continued and finally, he informed the gathering about the contrast and significance of Bihu observation in Barpeta, the cultural hub of lower Assam. I was sad when I visited Barpeta town for the first time during Bihu. I was very depressed, when I did not hear any rhytham of dhul, the Bihu songs that came out from the core of the young man’s heart; there was no mehendi, no kopou 142

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orchid. In my mind, I wondered whether I left behind my loving Assam and arrived in some foreign land.

But when the Bihu days came nearer, he sensed a different kind of exotic. Instead of Bihu songs, “everywhere, in towns, in villages, in the rhythms of tal, khul and mridong, I heard Harinam. …On the seven day of the Bihu, in the Barpeta Sattra’s Kirtan gharthere was that harinama again, with large gatherings of men and women.” Substantiating a similar structure of exotic, instead of first person, putting the plural we to represent some kind of a dominant upper Assam national collectivity, he declared, “We have no authority or intension to ask Barpeta to take to Bihu nama, instead of hari nama. The specificity of Barpeta should spread all over Assam. Let namadharma of Mahapurush spread over every household-the pure land of Assam become pristine through it.” This conceptual connection between exotic Bihu and the exotic namadharma or for that matter, any other alternative exoticism such as sports, gymnasium etc. had become the dominant structure through which Bihu was observed, celebrated as the new fantasy of Assamese nationalism. This conceptually similar structure reproduced a new kind of festival ethics, new sense of exotic and a new code of understanding festival. Of course, such aesthetic code of observing festival, particularly Bihu was not outside of disciplinary fantasy of Assamese nationalism. The familial, the patriarchal fantasy of Assamese nationalism was now all ready to invoke, enumerate, reproduce such structural codification, its discursive narrative in every juncture of spectacular or any particularities of the exoticism. Rajkhowa was not outside of it. In fact, in his concluding remark, congratulating the young girls who joined the “run with crutch” competition he said that it was not surprising that they could do it as “very recently the Assamese women fought bravely against the enemy by riding horses.” But such warrior spirit, such bravery was also mediated through the feminine discipline. He cautioned the young men that Assamese women were so concerned about “their respect” that even if “their expensive wear was inflicted by the “bonguti 143

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plant” or even if they had to cross a muddy road, they would never pull their “mekhela’ above the ankle.”46 Such language of sacrifice and its connection with the “feminine respectability,” was the new language through which the new exotic was celebrated or had become the dominant structure of Bihu festivals. Among the middle-class nationalist circles two types codes of Bihu celebration originated, the metropolitan and Bihu in the local, urban spaces. Due to the upper Assam specificity of Bohag Bihu, in the metropolis, particularly in Calcutta Bohag Bihu was still a distant dream. Instead, Magh Bihu was very popular. The first Magh Bihu was celebrated in 1921, in the Sibapur botanical garden. But conceptually and sometime even structurally, as we will see, there was not much difference between the structure of the programme with other new festivals. For instance, the Calcutta magh Bihu celebration was no difference with Lachit or Jaymati thithi utsav. Except that the religious rituals were more prominently visible in Magh Bihu celebration in local urban spaces of Assam. The prominence of nam prasanga, the sports competitions and finally in the Bihu night, staging of a play. Generally, that was the programme structure of Magh Bibhu celebration in urban local centers of Assam. Asomiya reported on 26th January, 1935, This year also, like earlier years, the Magh Bihu was celebrated in Nagaon. On the evening of the uruka, Sri Domborudhar Baruah, reiterated Sirastadar initiated the Namprasanga and all the young men followed him. On the day of Bihu, from around noon different sports competitions were held and in the night the play called Luit Konwar was staged. (Asomiya, 26th January, 1935.)

However, in Nalbari, one of the major towns of lower Assam, that year, instead of spiritualism, the focus was on the muscular, physical growth of the young men. In fact, the news published in Asomiya categorically said that “the main reason for organizing the magh Bihu in Nalbari is to organize competitions of certain sports that help the 46

Shailadhar Rajkhowa Rachanavali, 391.

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muscular growth of the young students and inspire them to participate in the Magh Bihu festivals.” That is why, the news declared, “walking, race with obstruction, racing while carrying someone on the back, weight throw etc sports were given for the competition.” However, in the metropolitan space, both in Calcutta and Shillong, the cosmopolitan capital of Assam-things were different. The structural similarity was, of course, there, but the metropolitan tone was surmounting in this celebration. The Asomiya reads for same year of 1935: This time under the leadership of some young men, Assamese community celebrated Magh Bihu with joy in Shillong. On the day of Uruka, all the castes and creeds of Assamese Hindus joined in feasting. The Bihu day was also celebrated with different sporting competitions. The specialty of this year Bihu festival is that in Shillong like cosmopolitan area-through the huge participation of the Assamese community…..the domination of the Shillong based Assamese community was celebrated in front of others. At the end, “hell to the Shillong based Assamese” etc. sloganeering was also done. The nostalgic tone, the alienation of a cosmopolitan city and discourse of community domination these were the bases of Bihu celebration in fantasy land of Shillong, then the colonial capital of Assam. By then, it had been almost fifty years that Magh Bihu had been celebrated in Calcutta. The sporting competitions, included, as the report emphasized, sporting activities of the women and children. And “the most interesting part of the Bihu was” as the report informed, “the Bihu dance performance of the gathering.” “The young men like Bhim Singh, Lakhi Saikia, manic Phukan Ganesh Kotoki, Sundar Gogoi etc “Bihuwan” were commendable for their performance.” Such symbols of Assamese were enjoyed by different audience and the “Bengali, Hindusthani and Sahabas were very much please by the nam and the dance.” It is difficult to fathom whether such Bihu dance performance was still possible in Assam proper or any the district headquarters by a member of Assamese middle class. Interestingly, instead of Bohag Bihu, the first public 145

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gathering was organised in Calcutta on the occasion of Magh Bihu in January 1921. Subsequently, and particularly in the last part of the same decade, it spread out to other mainland Indian cities. Students studying in different universities, educational institutes were the prime movers of these celebrations. In a diasporic space such strategy resolves the question of specificity, strengthens the national community. Instead of Bohag Bihu, such celebration, actually resolves the problem of specificity between upper and lower Assam, question of Durga Puja and Bohag Bihu as national festival. In a metropolitan space, participation of significant individuals from peripheral space with somewhat splitting loyalties, confirms the importance of such occasions in forging the national community. Celebrating the significance of Assamese Zamindars and particularly their wives’ participation in different sports competitions, Abahan confirms in one of its reports in 1930 the signification of such occasion in metropolitan space.47 But despite that regulatory codification, however, in a diasporic space it invokes sheer nostalgia and reproduces a connotation of festivity in that new, somewhat boring national imagination of festive structure. Published in 1924, Snehalata Bhattacharya’s book titled Amar Bihu (Our Bihu) connects first Magh Bihu celebration in Sibapur Botanical Garden of Calcutta with the economy of nostalgia. She wrote, The thing which a human finds without any effort is always seemed as not precious. But when it is not within their reach, it becomes priceless. In every minute, body and mind wishes for it, through their two hands they try to embrace it. With open eyes they see its every move so that a blink of their eyes could not miss its movements –the Magh Bihu in Calcutta in my mind becomes like that only. .....When I got the news that Bihu would be organized in Sibapur Botanical Garden and we are going there, I was thrilled, impatiently waiting for that day.4885

47 48

Abahan, Magh, second year, 4th issue, 1930: 865-866. Snahalata Bhattacharya, Amar Bihu, (Place: Publisher, 1924), 1.

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Not just limiting herself within Magh Bihu celebration, her nostalgia waves through the different rituals of the both the Bihus. She recounts the banality, everydayness of those rituals. “In Assam, for me, Bihu was just a day of festival in the calendar. That eating of pithas, korai of newly harvested rice, sandhoh, sira eating, bathing with mah and turmeric, wearing newly weaved gamusa, dancing in the rhythm of huchori, watching Bihu-nam performance, playing egg –fighting with friends rituals…was just a kind of some passing happy moments.”49 But staying in metropolitan Calcutta, when she hears about the news that in the Sibapur botanical garden Magh Bihu is going to be celebrated it triggered a euphoric excitement, she claimed, which she did not come across in joining many metropolitan consumptions of amusement with her friends. Such split with the modern ways of celebration, invokes in her, the memories of the Magh Bihu days in Assam, on the riverside of the Guwahati town. Upon the wider breath of Brahmaputra river reflected the hills of the bank, on the sand beach young boys burned the small thatch house like structure prepared for Magh Bihu-the sound coming from the burning bamboo under the fabulous morning sky when it slowly became red- I have seen many times in Guwahati but I do not know why a small letter of invitation makes me so impatient...In beautiful location of nature I went many times with friends for picnic but never I got such indescribable joy and happiness…50

Such euphoric and uncontrollable happiness it was that when she went to bed the previous night she decided to rise up early in the morning on the day of Magh Bihu to take a morning bath. But “such an impatient happiness it was, I rise up many times in the night in a false sense that it was already dawn and fall into sleep again. But when I rise, to my utter discomfort it was already a late morning.”51 But such impatient joy, sheer hope to participate in the Bihu was, however, not be realized immediately. Her

49

Bhattacharya, Amar Bihu, 1-2. Bhattacharya, 2. 51 Bhattacharya, 4. 50

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journey from home to Sibapur botanical garden was consistently developed with impatient joy and frustration of not being able to reach because of the obstacles throughout the journey. The obstructions constantly remind her of the contaminated world of metropolitan Calcutta, in contrast to pristine, pure land of Assam. But amidst such a frustrating world, obstacles in the journey instigate her determination, her love for Bihu. However, there was a somewhat narrative jerk in the story. The narrative strategy of relegating her impatience throughout the journey gets an abrupt hold in the structure of the Bihu programme. Despite her best attempts, she has to wave her narrative within the narrow confines of the beauty of the flowers of the Sibapur botanical garden, the athletic competitions among the boys, the meeting on Lachit Borphukan and finally the community lunch. This disruption of euphoric nostalgia and the actual reality of the structured national festival was the strategic position that Assamese nationalism offered to its subjects. But the economy of nostalgia that generates in the solitary diasporic present also reconstituted a new set of festival imagination in the actual operation of nationalist strategy on the banks of the Brahmaputra. However, such a concoction of middle class aesthetic possibility had also been waved through the semantic semblance of literalization, reproduction of gender norms and new aesthetic understanding of festival. In Assam, however, the mahila samiti networks also focused on nam-kirtan while reiterating samitis’ mandate as such. For instance, nam-kritan on the occasion of Magh Bihu among the neighbourhood women under the aegis of Mahila Samiti networks was also prominent. Through print networks new rituals of celebration were publicised and reinforced as new codes of festivals. Titled “Magh Bihu Upolokhya Kirtan Seva” (Recitation of Kirtan on the occasion of Magh Bihu), in 1928, in Gharjyoti, Ratna Kumari Rajkhowa, in her speech on the occasion describes the significance of month of Magh in both Sanskrit language and Assamese social life. Making an allegorical connection between cattle and women, she declared, “Hindus believe that cattle are integral part 148

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and parcel of God. For agricultural reasons, the cattle have been tamed for some months of the year. Today they have been released. After taming them for six months, the cattle have been released. But sadly the men tamed the women for twelve months. Could we not think that from now on we are also free?”52 Such feminist consciousness, however, slips into the national consciousness when she urges her fellow comrades to prepare Assamese pitha delicacies on the occasion of Bihu. Finally, connecting the significance of some Magh Bihu rituals in the Assamese social life, she urged the almighty for blessings for future. Such new production of codes, elaboration and reinforcement of rituals in different urban contexts coincided and sometime articulates new practices in the rural in a world where the split between rural and urban have always been indistinct. We will discuss such shift festival code in a later chapter. On the other hand, in the wake of tremendous Congress mobilisation, the first Bihu convention was organised in Guwahati in 1931 by Guwahati Ekota Sabha. A report in Abahan, published in May, 1931, narrates the programme. On the day of the uruka the festival had commenced. From the evening of that day, audience gathered around the bank of Brahmaputra. There was no dearth of women audiences too...they also joined in huge numbers. In the goru Bihu morning, in the Latasil field there were some athletic competitions among the small children...then from 11 in the morning there were swimming competition and boat racing competition in the river. What a soothing scene! Once the Assamese naval force under the leadership of Lachit Barphukan, had been able to defeat the mighty Mughal force. Though that day does no longer exist, but by recounting those memories through these, the nationality would return to its strength. After boat race, there was the swimming competition. ...by taking risk of life, 70 individuals joined in this competition which was no doubt commendable. The next day, there was Lathi-khel competition, sward-khel competition, horse-race competition among the youths. Without the knowledge 52

Ratna Kumari Rajkhowa, “Magh Bihu upoloxhya Kirtan seva”, Ghorjyoti, 2, no. 5, magh 1928: 415.

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of these games a nationality cannot assert its qualities. They are symbol of physical virtue of the nationality. In the picnic of water supply hill was joined by everyone. In the evening at Kumar Bhaskar Mandir, there were music competitions. That kind of competitions and euphoric environment was observed for the first time in Guwahati. On the occasion of Rongali Bihu, what was being started was very good and could be imitated by every other place in the future. 53

Despite the author’s emphasis to imitate the structure of the programme for Bihu celebration, such structure of the programme was, as we have seen, not new. The idea of sports as corollary of the masculine might of the subject of the nation and particularly in the wake of Swadeshi movement had already been laid out in the metropolitan location of Calcutta. However, as part of Congress mobilisation in rural areas a new code of celebration was developed. With namprasanga, meetings, processions in the village etc. had become the major structure of such celebration. Asomiya reported in Sotial Gaon namghar of Sotia, “the men and women,” of the village organised a meeting on the occasion of the Bihu. “First nam Prasanga” then with “khol and Tal”,a Borgit was performed. Then,” Sri Jugendranarayan Barakakati read out a then recently published essay of Kamalakanta Bhattacharya titled “Manat para katha”. After that some essays and poems on Bihu were read out and then Borhamthuri and Mehendi were distributed. Finally, the villagers prayed for the three Congress members of the village who were being arrested by the colonial government for their role in the national movement. The significance of such celebration, particularly reading out Kamalakanta Bhattacharya’s essay was nothing but reproduction of a new disciplinary regime through the congress mobilisation. Kamalakanta, who once suggested the “young literati,” not to endorse Bihu, now wrote essays on Bihu remembering what he had seen of Bihu in his childhood days. Published in Asomiya in 8th April, 1932 , an 53

(Abahan, jath, 1853, 2nd year, 8th issue, 1931, pp-943-944) 150

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article titled ‘Manat Para Katha”, he basically tried to narrate the Bihu rituals’ connection with the contemporary Congress ideas against Assamese villagers’ indolence, lack of masculine energy etc. “Earlier,” he declared, “Bihu was celebrated for a month. Because, at that time Assamese people were self-sufficient.” He claimed, there was no scarcity...except salt they would not but anything “foreign.” Because there was no need of buying from outside. At that time Assamese people would produce everything and they were very workaholic. They would love their works. They would not like if someone helped them in their works. That is why I could remember that even when servants were at home, the Brahmans, the Gossains, mahantas would work for themselves. Not like today when self help is regarded as shameful.

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Inventing Conflicting Traditions : Bihu and the Early Postcolonial Romances

“To promote literature, language, culture, music, dance, musicals and arts, the government in independent India had started various projects. The government of India is planning to establish academy of letters, academy of dance, drama and music and the academy of art, and indirectly sponsored institute like all India cultural academy-like institutes should be established by the states. In many ways, Assam could be regarded as ‘small India’ and from that point of view; these kinds of institutes are especially significant for cultural assimilation here. But without government assistance in poor states like Assam, it is impossible to establish such institutes. It is because of this that the cultural academy which had been established two years ago by the president of Guwahati Sahitya Sabha, Sri Ambikagiri Raichudhuri, could not do anything substantial. The Sangit Natak Akademi which has been established recently under the leadership of Governor Joyram Doulatram was subject to criticism for not being of the

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desired standard. Yet we wish its growth and popularity. We are also happy that the governor is also planning to establish an academy of letters soon.”1 In 1952, the editorial of the Asam Sahitya Sabha Patrika made the above comment. While congratulating the Sangit Natak Akademi, the editorial claimed that ‘in public eyes,’ the government of Assam ‘has delayed giving importance to the task of promoting the literature and culture of Assam.’ ‘When in future,’ it observes, ‘the history of this period will be written, they will write the practice of indifference toward literature and culture by this government, ignorance toward the talents of the state and the everyday practices of earnings through unlawful means.’ It further stressed, ‘not just the progress of Assamese language and literature, the Assam government should also plan to promote study and analyses of tribal language. Comprehensive research of these languages would widen the knowledge of Assamese language and culture.’ It commends the project of researching on some tribal languages which had been taken up by the Gauhati University at that period. Spelling out the lack of commitment, it mentioned that the literary pension which had been declared by the government some ‘three years back’ to some poor Assamese writers had remained unfulfilled. ‘In this country,’ it comments, ‘if a writer is dying in hunger, there is no way out to help him.’ It further stressed that with regard to Asam Sahitya Sabha, the government should alter the ambiguous policy of the colonial regime and help the institution substantially so that it can promote the main regional language of the area.

2

Inaugurating a new

network between the government and the larger strategies of Assamese nationalism, the editorial delineated the post colonial fantasy of the Assamese nationalist politics. Of course, the state government usually reciprocated such demands and through these complex process of production of demands and reciprocity, a new kind of elite nationalist version of Assamese nationalism was consolidated in early post colonial 1 2

Asom Sahitya Sabha Patrika, 2:3(1952) 188. Asom Sahitya Sabha189

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Assam. This occurred at the same time that a parallel, significant resistance of an emerging, alternative version of Assamese nationalism was stepping in the doorway. The discursive addition of this alternative version was largely based on the ‘agriculture and labour’ equation, through which it tried to produce a new kind of Assamese subject. However, despite their specific particularities, and positions of difference, many actors overlapped. They operated in both versions, but the structural mediation actually distinguished them from each other. Through different government sponsorships, networks between the Satra and the state government, and RCPI-led share cropping insurgency (1948-1952) and it’s after effects, two alternative, almost different versions of Bihu were invented and disseminated. The agenda of this chapter is to delineate these complex relationships.

THE VOICE OF THE NATION-STATE

A major example of tussles between Assamese civil society and the government of Assam was witnessed on the inaugural day of the Guwahati–Shillong centre of All India radio. Due to some ‘non-Assamese’ conspiracy, as a person claimed in his letter to editor of daily Asomiya, the only daily vernacular news paper at that time, on 24th June, 1948 the radio station was “going to perform the ‘Jana Gana’ as the national anthem on the inauguration day of the Guwahati-Shillong centre.”3 The nonrepresentation of the word Assam in the ‘Jana-Gana’ had created a hue and cry in the public psyche in Assam, and the performance of the song on the inaugural ceremony of radio had finally produced a collective protest both in Guwahati and Shillong, then the capital of Assam . However, ‘Jana-Gana’ had not been selected yet as the national

3

Sri Nokul Das, “Letters to editor,” Asomiya, June 24:1948.

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anthem. The states had different opinions on it. For instance, as quoted in an editorial in Asomiya, the Bengal government was in support of ‘Bande-mataram,’ whereas the government of Assam decided to propose ‘Jana-Gana’ as the national anthem, probably for its secular appearance. Through different gatherings and by organizing public opinion through the Asomiya, the ‘Shilpi-Sangha,’-a newly formed group of artists in Guwahati decided to stage a protest on the day of the inaugural of the Stations, both in Guwahati and Shillong. The Asomiya reported, In Guwahati, before the program started, common people and volunteers of the artist community were seen picketing in front of the station gate. The picketing was peaceful and non-violent. A crowd of almost five thousand persons which included some spectators along with the picketers had gathered in the area and they were constantly shouting ‘Shame,’ ‘Shame,’ ‘Bandemataram,’ ‘Down down Rohini Chudhuri,’ ‘down with Mauluna Taibullah’ etc. The protest was spectacular. The guests who appeared for the ceremony were very few. The member of the constituent assembly, Rohini Chudhuri, three female members of American Baptist Mission and publicity minister of Assam, Maulouna Taibullah had turned up in the event. The female members of the Baptist mission were being appealed not to enter in the campus but they entered by crossing the body of picketers who laid down in front of them to stop their entry in the campus. To negotiate a compromise at the nick of the time, as he had told the gathering, Sri Rohini Choudhuri, entered the campus to call the primer of Assam on the telephone. However, he came back after some time and told the crowd that ‘jana gana mana’ is the only song that could be adopted as the national anthem of India. When the crowd realized that he was not going to come out from the campus, they started sloganeering against him.4

4

Asomiya, July 2: 1948.

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In midst of the protest, Gopinath Bordoloi, in his speech given in Shillong, had envisaged a possible future through the radio station. Reported by Asomiya, he said: Art, literature, music, musical instruments, general overall development of culture ...the radio is instrumental. The vaisnavite literature of Assam, borgit, the music of Manipur, the cultures of the brothers from the hills are very dear to us. But those could not be popularized much until now...we hope that now with this radio station, we will be successful to popularize in a wider scale, whether the people of the plains or the brothers from the hills-language, culture, literature, music will be successfully received everywhere.5

Revealing the strategic importance of the radio centre which would have been in the frontier of India elicited the prompt response of Sardar Vallabhai Patel, who was then both home and cultural minister, to establish this station as the third center in post colonial India. Patel said, “with regard to this point, I would also like to mention about the various plains people, ethnic and hills brothers living in the various places of Assam. During the colonial regime, especially for remoteness of the places, unavailability of the roads, the unity and affection between us would have not been enhanced. Instead of unity, we had enmity and mistrust for each other. With this radio centre, we would erase those unworthy feelings and make a new, prosperous nation 6.” However, the Governor, Sir Akbar Hydari stressed that ‘the radio is not the publicity instrument of one culture, particularly, in places like Assam where different communities resides, this is worthy to note.7” In an advertisement published in the daily Asomiya, on July 1, 1948 , it was observed, ‘the territorial isolation of Assam, its different languages, wider and sparse settlements of its people in the length and breadth of the country are providing innumerable problems to the engineers and

5

Asomiya, July 2, 1948:1. Asomiya, july 2, 1948. 7 Asomiya, july, 2, 1948:2. 6

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program executive of the centre8.” Initially with a shorter radius of broadcasting (not more than 100 km), the station had limited access. However, it was reported that in 1958, the power of the station was augmented by the commissioning of a 10 KW SW Transmitter. As a result, the Guwahati station’s broadcast could now reach the whole of Assam.9 In the beginning, the Station had two transmissions daily. “The morning transmission was of one and the half hour duration with programmes commencing from 7.00 am and continuing up to 8.30 am. The evening transmission was from 5.00 pm to 9.15 pm for duration of 4 hours 15 minutes.”10 The radio was not, however, entirely new to Assam. A 30 minute Assamese program was broadcasted from Calcutta. This program started from 7th July, 1943. The program started at ‘5.30 in the afternoon and ended at 6 in the evening’. The schedule of this half an hour broadcast was distributed through ‘5 minutes for songs, 5 minutes for news, essays on science, agriculture, culture and literature for five minutes and the final 10 minutes was dedicated to programs like songs on request, answering of the audience letters, women’s program, skits and musicals…11.” Mostly as a nostalgic endeavor of Calcutta settled Assamese intellectuals and their wives, persons like Jatindranath Duara, Haliram Deka, Gyannath Bora etc, had participated in various capacities in the broadcast. In a letter to the editor, two ‘probasi asomiya’ complained, “…the schedule of the Assamese programs instigate laughter… the golden water of the river Souvanshiri, its green river bank, ‘riha-mekhela’ of Palashbari, the Assamese attire, discussion on Bihu etc. have only relegated the Assamese to its past.”12 But with the establishment of this new and independent station, the situation had not changed drastically. Despite Bordoloi’s advice and Hydari’s caution, the station mostly produced programs in Assamese with negligible hours slotted for programmes in Khasi language, produced “Dujon Prabasi Asomiya,” Notun Asomiya, August 17, 1946. http://airguwahati.gov.in/history-of-air-guwahati.asp, accessed on 1.5.2016 10 http://airguwahati.gov.in/history-of-air-guwahati.asp, accessed on 1.5.2016 11 Dilip Sharma, Akashbani r prathom Asomiya Anusthan, 84. 12 “Dujon Probasi” 8 9

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and broadcasted from Shillong. Almost all the latter-day stalwarts of Assamese literature, music and theatre, persons like Bhupen Hazarika, Satyaprasad Boruah, Syed Abdul Malik, Purusuttam Das, Birendra Nath Phukan etc. had joined as program assistants (later program executive) in their initial days of artistic pursuits. Taking responsibility of specific programmes, persons like Birinchi Kumar Baruah (responsible for the program dedicated to children), Maheshwar Neog (responsible for a program specified for village folks with Kirtinath Hazarika, later the editor of Dainik Asom and also an ideologue of Assam movement) also occasionally contributed. When Dr Neog joined Gauhati University, Mahim Bora, a brilliant writer mostly on rural life of Assam, was the producer of this programme. Neog’s program was called ‘Gaoliya-Raijoloi,.’ He spoke through the persona of ‘Dhanbor kai.’ Assuming the metaphorical identity of a village ideologue, he would broadcast the programme. ‘The program would start with a ‘signature tune’: ‘raij mur roja, bukur bandhoi oi, mur sewar tholi, (the people are my king, they are my friends of the heart, I am only here to serve them.) He said, “…slowly I made it sound like that of a ‘gaoliya chatting’ as if it was happening in someone’s inner courtyard...Announcer Sibaprasad Bhattacharya and artist Bhupen Hazarika also performed as some of the characters in the program.” Dilip Kumar Sengupta, the second director of the station said, “Listening to Neog in radio, anyone will be convinced that Assamese is completely independent from Bengali language.”13.” The development of Assamese language through these radio broadcasts was always on the radar. The nationalization of the hill areas still the dream of Assamese nation. However, the conflict with the direction of the central government, the Guwahati radio station had always been a battle station between the central government ideas of nationalization of the area and Assamese nation’s fantasy over it.

13

Maheswar Neog, Jivanar Digh Aru Bani?), Guwahati: Chandra Prakash 2009), 254-256.

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By 1957-58 these issues turned ugly and Assamese publicists tried their best to resist the new schemes multiple language policy in the area. Dr Neog himself wrote, ‘two suggestions could not be carried in the station. First, to broadcast a program in which, like Hindi language, Assamese language could be taught, and secondly, during announcement of borgit-ankagit performance, the announcement of their raga and tala.” 14 Of course, many performative strategies of the Assamese nation could be realized through the radio now but the problem was not just the language, but the technical set-up, with some given convention of All India Radio, the performance in the radio was not an easy task. In fact, as we will see, the Bihu needed to be learned to maintain the pool of artists for broadcast. The major obstacle was despite the scarcity of professional Assamese artistes, whoever came but failed because the given convention that they could not ‘maintain the rhythm with tanpura,’ in modern songs as the harmonium was forbidden in Indian radio station under the initiative of John Fouldes the European musicologist, who argued that ‘its welltempered scale did such violence to the microtonic intervals characteristic of Indian music16 There was a general lack of professional artists. Without any substantial technological backing and infrequent production of gramophone records, there was not much that could be done in professionalizing or the mass production of the genres in its distinct performative structure. Due to lack of financial enterprise and affordability of the consumers, the standardized, technical reproduction of genre was until then a distant dream. Jyotiprasad Agrwala’s ‘Joymoti,’ the Assamese film released in 1935 was part of that larger project of the performative fantasy of Assamese language nationalism. However, it had failed, as Joytiprasad argued, because ‘the lack of substantial Assamese population is the main reason behind…. in a nation where a daily news paper cannot be run expecting some profit, a film studio based on Assamese 14

Neog, 256. David Lelyveld, “Upon the Subdominant, Administering Music in All India Radio,” in Consuming Modernity, Public Culture in a south Asian World, ed. Carol A. Breckenridge(London: 1995) 53 16

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language is a very difficult task.”15 In an article, explicitly naming as ‘Asomiya film silpo garhat asomiya dorsokor bhumika,’ (the responsibility of Assamese audience in developing Assamese film industry), Jyotiprasad argues why the Assamese audience had a responsibility in developing the Assamese film industry. By describing significant aspects of Joymoti, he urged, ‘When Assamese audience watch Assamese movie and compare them with high budget Bengali and Hindustani films, they should realize that Assamese film would be watched only by half of the population of six districts of Assam.”16.” Thus in the post colonial time, the government of Assam was seen as the agency to fulfill the performative dreams of Assamese nationalism. The radio brought a new excitement and challenges to that strategy. Like the early Assamese initiative of the 1890s, the same strategy was deployed to get “songs”’ for the radio. In a memoir, Tafazzul Ali, one of the earliest artists who worked in the Guwahati station, wrote, The famous lyricist Puroshottam Das was very particular about the poetic and the literary aspects of the lyrics of the modern Assamese songs. Subsequently, a couple of years after its inception, the songs of only those lyricists who were permitted by the Kendra were aired by Akashvani. This regulation led to shortage of new creations. To meet this shortage Akasvani” asked famous Assamese writers and poets to write lyrics for it. 17

However, in the folk and particularly in other Satra music, the situation was still not good. As their supposed authenticity has been related to the institutions and their territorial locations, the broadcasting of such genre was always a difficult call. A new network of the radio and certain satras emerged through this process. In the beginning, “the ‘Borgeet’ of both the Mahapurush had been broadcasted from Guwahati station regularly. Doyal Chandra Sutradhar of Borpeta Satra, Moniram Gayan Muktiar of 15

Jyotiprasad Agarwalla, Jyotiprasad Rachanawali, ed. Hiren Gohain (Guwahati: Publication Board Assam, 2013), 533. 16 Jyotiprasad Agarwalla, “Asomor film silpo gorhat Asomiya Dorxokor Daiyatva,” in Jyotiprasad Rachanavali,539.. 17 Taffazzul Ali, “Akashvani’s gift to modern Assamese music,” http://www.enajori.com/?p=559, accessed ,5.5.2016,12.35 am)

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Kamalabari Satra, Girikanata Mahanta of Bordowa Satra etc were the artists of this genre.” While in Uja pali of lower Assam,Debaru Uja of Nalbari area was the artist. “In any circumstances, he would come wearing the special natua dress used in the performance for the recording. Similarly. the oldest Jikir artist of Guwahati station was Abdur Rahim of Hajo.” 18, However, it was hardly possible for a regular broadcast of these genres with such a few artists when the station had no recording facilities and the broadcasts had to be limited to only live performances. However, in the midst of Guwahati, with a natural distance of hundred miles to travel over to reach the authentic location of upper Assam, Bihu had to be produced and broadcasted in different ways, without the authentic gaoliyas there was no Bihu geet artist in lower Assam at that time so they were brought from Jorhat. However, some artists were trained locally and were used for Bihu geet broadcast. Promod Chandra Bordoloi, an anchor of the station, took lead in arranging and producing Bihu geet program. Since he was from Tinsukia, he had a substantial understanding of Bihu. Named ‘Barbuliya Bihu’ and written by Sayad Abdul Malik, it was broadcast as weekly program. Since Birendra Nath Phukan also had substantial understanding of Bihu, he also produced some of these programs.19

In the initial years of the center, Kamrupi Lokgeet was started by Purusttom Das. In the later years it has become a dominant genre in radio broadcasts.”20. However, like Bihu geet, Das had a new strategy to maintain the smooth broadcast of Kamrupi Lokgeet. As his colleague Satyaprasad Baruah wrote, ‘ …..he was the inventor of the genre called ‘Kamrupi-Lokgeet21.’ To popularize this genre and widen its repository, he himself had written some songs secretly and would give the artists to perform as Kamrupi Lokeeit.

Mrigandra Nath raichudhuri, “Akaxbani Guwahati kendrar arambhani kalar eti khatiyan,” in Akaxbani Guwahati Kendrar Sunali jyanti Smoronika, 1997, 27. 19 Raichudhuri, 28. 20 Raichudhuri,28. 21 Barua, 12. 18

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However, given the domination of upper Assam language politics, lokgeet or other performative genre of lower Assam slowly slipped into the ‘Brajabuli’ language, rather than retaining its lower Assam language flavour.

22

The same process was also

maintained in the case of Borgeet. By ‘taking advice from Doyal Chandra Sutradhar, a musician from Borpeta satra and Birendra Phukan from upper Assam, -‘he trained some of the modern classical singers on Borgit and popularized them through radio.23 However, as there was no standardized notion of borgit performance, AIR was attacked claiming its supposed transgression in broadcasting borgit or for that matter the new genre called Lokgeet. Claiming lokgeet as an authentic genre of lower Assam, in a letter to the editor some Mohini Boruah and Dipali Baruah of Barpeta had objected to the supposed transgression of the original in radio broadcast. Stressing the intricate detail of the ‘xur’ and ‘performance,’ they claimed, ‘there was a ‘big’ mistake in the Lokgeet broadcasted on 11 September, 1954.” Instead of Lokgeet, they claimed, ‘the song was mixed with xur of “juna-nama” and “juna-nama” was performed only by the bhakats of Barpeta, they claimed. Stressing that the lokgeet has its own “xur” they declared, “we wish to listen to true “xur” of lokgeet. We do not wish to listen to embellished or plagiarized “xur.” In villages, there are artists who can sing lokgeet in original and we want to listen to them24.” Placing radio as the epitome of commodity culture, they declared, ‘for the lust of money, we cannot afford to lose Assamese culture. We request the All India Radio to invite these original singers for lokgeet.” However they indicate that, “there are debates on the ‘xur’ of Borgit” and thus ‘until the ongoing research on Borgit finishes the radio should broadcast Borgit in Satriya tune. By that way, one can keep the Satriya culture alive.’ Indicating ‘Satriya borgit’ with the borgit performances in Satras, they said, ‘the borgits that are broadcasted by the station are not similar to the ‘tunes’ that are performed in Barpeta.” There were artists in Barpeta who can perform 22

Interview with Utpal Dutt, a cultural critic, activists and a broadcaster on 14.05.2016, 1 pm to 5 pm, Guwahati. Satya Prasad Baruah, Otit Suari, 12. 24 Asomiya, September 21, 1954. 23

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Borgit maintaining its original ‘xur’, ‘tal’, and ‘man,’ but they claimed were “waning prematurely in their villages without any recognition. Instead of broadcasting Borgit or Lokgeet only in one artist’s voice, the station should experiment with various artists. By doing this one might enquire about the original ‘xur.” These difference between original and radio’s production had never died down. In fact, Neog wrote despite relative standardization borgit in the later times, the radio still would not announce the exact “xur and tal” to avoid controversies. But by 1956-57, with the changed policy, Guwahati AIR decided to broadcast programs in different regional languages of the then Assam. Basically, broadcasting of the collected and recorded different music of various ‘tribes’, 30 languages to be exact, the initiative shortened the schedule for Assamese broadcast. An officer of that time remembers, “In 1957, an initiative of collection and recordings of tribal songs and music started by the Guwahati station… This writer especially collected music of various Naga clans.”25 These new initiatives actually undermined the so-called domination of Assamese language within the political territory of Assam. Sahitya Sabha and many individuals had invoked this discourse and started to mobilize people’s opinion on this. On the eve of the state reorganization commission, and the emerging politics of the Asomiya nationalism to recognize Assamese as the official language of Assam, the Assamese nationalist pressure over Radio was imminent. Criticizing the domination of Hindi in AIR, Guwahati,, one letter in Notun Asomiya of 11 March, 1959 said, Within the six hours and 44 minutes programme, except the Assamese news, the total hour for Assamese program is two hours and thirty minutes. As a national language, the government should provide opportunity to listen to Hindi language, but to do that from morning to evening, broadcasting of Hindi songs is not the way out. This system only reduces Akashvani’s popularity. Moreover, the authority wants to reduce ‘Aidaur buloni’ program to only two days in a 25

Abani Kumar Das, Akaxbani Guwahati Kendrar Sunali jyanti Smoronika, 1997, 63.

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week. We protest and demand that the earlier policy should be maintained for this program. In our view, the Assamese program should be increased at least for five hours and to do that the afternoon program should be increased to one hour. Discussion on Assamese language and literature should be broadcasted at least two times in a week. The songs performing time should be reduced from 7 minutes to 5 minutes so that there is no repetition. In 20 minutes of film music, at least 12 minutes should be dedicated for Assamese music. In this way, this program also gets popularity. If Assamese git and xur could be translated and broadcasted simultaneously, it will help promotion of Hindi language and also Assamese git and xur will get an all -India audience. In the classical music program, broadcasting of Assamese songs should be made mandatory.26

The Sahitya Sabha was protesting these new policies in its fifth resolution of 1958 Tinsukia convention criticized Radio. Claiming that “established in the heart of Assam,” the radio had not done anything in last ten years for promotion of Assamese language, literature and culture. , “Along with reduction of the Assamese programmes,” the resolution confirmed, “broadcasting programmes from old records, the centre was shirking from its responsibility. Appointing officials who had no in-depth knowledge about Assamese language and culture, the centre was trying to disrespect Assamese literature and culture.”

27

Criticizing separate programmes for “NEFA” region, Naga

Hills and “even the progammes for tea tribes who lives in Assam’s heartland,” in Hindi language was criticised and declared that through it the Radio actually tried to disrupt the “national unity” of Assam. In 1959, however, in midst of the serious political demand of other hill areas for separate state demand, the AIR revised its decisions and the central minister of information and technology declared that there was no language policy as such. In that

26 27

Some audience, Asomiya, March 11, 1959. General Secretary, “Sahitya Sabhar Bhitore bahire,” Asom Sahitya Sabha Patrika, 17,: 31(1958):51.

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context, an unnamed letter demanded instead of broad casting from earlier records, fresh performance, mentoring of new talents was sought for. 28 Congratulating Assamese people for successfully putting forward their legitimate demand, Lila Gogoi, the folklorist wrote on 29th January, 1959, The tribal and tea garden’s programme using Hindi has been roundly criticized all over Assam. The Asom Sahitya Sabha, Assamese popular opinion and the public gatherings in different parts of Assam finally compelled the air authority to revise its policies. If the people would have been conscious, this might not have happened. We congratulate the Assamese “raij” and originations for being successful in placing our legitimate demand. The members of the advisory committee of the AIR, Guwahati, Dr Birinchi Kumar Barua and Professor Porag Chaliha argued and suggested instead of speaking “akash-bani,” in a Hindi tone, it should be speaking “akax-bani” in Asomiya tone. There are many writings on this in news papers. So I request the AIR to do the same.

Radio’s influence was tremendous. Not just in terms of Assamese language and its dissemination through the radio in a time when Assamese nationalists were fighting on different front to establish the language hegemony. But in the constitution of different performative genres, including Bihu was deeply influenced by the Guwahati station. Bihu’s articulation, particularly its middle class consumption was developed through the radio. The scarcity of artists, lack of “trained professionals,” enabled many interesting sites of “music schools,” competitions on various musical genres, including Bihu was sprang up at this stage. The middle-class sensibilities, of course, were selective in understanding Bihu. So very different versions of “Bihu” songs were articulated. It is interesting to note that the so called “Bihu Samrat,” of 1970s Khagen Mahanta was registered in Radio as artist of modern genre than the folk. Despite his Indian People’s

28

Unnamed, Asomiya, January 9, 1959.

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Theatre Association link, he was largely part of this middle-class sensibility over Bihu of 1950s and 60s. We will be discussing this phenomenon in the next section.

THE KAMRUPI MUSIC SCHOOL

The possibilities of making ‘Assamese music’ in line of a new branch of Indian classical tradition, after Carnatic and Hindustani were in the strategic calculations of Assamese nationalism for some time. The Assam Sahitya Sabha started its first ‘music conference’ as part of their yearly convention from 1924. However, the idea of “Kamrupi music” was developed around 1930s along with the new adventure in gramophone records. But the pervasive transgression of gramophone records in authenticating Assamese music, and the perception of the shallow, commodity orientation for “monetary gain” as registered by the two Borpeta folks on Guwahati Radio, meant that a new strategy for Assamese music was in order. The importance of music both as a performative practice, and as placing Assam in the “classical topography” of Indian classical music was argued, by 1930s and 40s with emerging significance given to the neo-Vaisnavite rituals as an original, secular discourse in Assamese nationalism.29 However, the idea of producing the modern within the “rustic world of Assamese village folks,” the fantasy that helped in reappropriation of Bihu in 1920s, was more elaborately constituted in ‘Bongit’ (or the song of the forest), a new genre that emerged with Jyotiprasad’s appropriation of ‘folk music’ in modern Assamese songs. These songs got popularized through Radio in 1960s. But the mapping of Kamrupi music itself enabled a structural relationship between classic and the folk, at least in Kirtinath Sharma Bordoloi’s speech on ”Ancient System of Kamrupi Music,” in 1937, given as a presidential speech in music

29

Assam sahitya Sabha started the music conference as the part of their yearly convention from 1924.

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conference of the Asom Sahitya Sabha, Guwahati convention, which he revised and published in 1938 as ‘Kamrupiyo Sangeet.’ . Saying that due to the local specificities, in India ‘three different schools of music developed- there were three different schools of music developed, the Bombay, Carnatic and Allahabadi Schools.; But Bordoloi insisting that “due to the contribution of some excellent contemporary musicians in Bengal, a new kind of music is developing with its local specificities, which in near future might get to recognize as Bengali school of Music.”30. And in that case, a little systematization of the “rich repository of Kamrupiya music” could enable it to become “one of the schools of Indian Music,” he claimed. Claiming that the music of Assamese gramophone records and theatres were “third rate” fusion of jangla, pachali of Bengal or otherwise of Boragi or “Bihu-sur,” which did not have much intricacies in terms of their musical intonations The dances that were performed in the theatres are of an “imitation of lower grade western dances.” Thus he argued for a comprehensive revival of Kamrupi Music. He argued that original Kamrupi music still existed in its pure form, though due to the lack of scientific research and practices, many of them had got corrupted. Articulating somewhat an evolutionary history of Assamese music based on the available anthropological understandings, he declared that . the purity of such music that still existed in music practices like ‘Biyah, Sukannani, Durgabori, Baremahe are still in its purist form.”

he divided Kamrupi

31

music into three distinct historical phases. The first phase was “pre-Sankardeva age or the evolution of Kamrupi Sangit” which are mostly consisted of “Bodo rag-ragini” and could be found in: Madhava Kandoli’s work like Puran-Mahabharata, Sukobi Naryan Deb or Suknarayan Deb’s work on Beula Lakindar Git Kahini’ ‘Durgabar Kaystha’s Durgabari Ramayan, Pre-Sankar writer’s work on Mahabharata, Ramayana, performers of Biyah Uja git, in 30 31

Kirtinath Sarma Bardoloi, Kamrupiya Sangit (publication details needed), 29. Sarma Bardoloi, Kamrupiya, 11.

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upper Assam32Huchori git, ‘Nau-Khela git’ of lower Assam, Bihu git, Gauliya Bhatioli git of Bhati-Kamrup, Borgit of upper Assam, in lower Assam –mo ho ho git, Siju-Gosain uja git, Fasaikhati, Brigohonir puja festival git. So mainly concentrating on the performative practices, including the pre-modern practices or performance of reading books such as Madhav Kandali, Suknarayna Deb etc, he claimed that in the best categories ‘Biyahgit, at least 400, Suknanin almost 1000, Durgabori 50 to 60, Bare-mahi 35 to 40 were still retained within the original “Bodosur.” In the “mediocre category,” he claimed, “Huchorigit-10 to 12, Mou Khel git 10 to 15, Bhatiyali 7to 8, Boragi geet 5 to 6, while Bihu geet were still in primitive form without much intricacy in sur and tal.” The second phase was of the post Sankardeva period or as he declared, “the golden age of Kamrupi Sangit.” In this phase, according to him, four kinds of categories of sur could be seen. Divided according to the influences of cultural origin, they were, “Nibhaj (pure) Arya, Arya-Bodo, Nibhaj(pure) Bodo and Bodo-Dravidian.” In Nibhaj Arya Sur, he claimed that Sankardeva, Madhavdeva and their contemporary writers’ nator git and Borgit were important. In his intricate detailing of different sur structure in terms of their historical, evolutionary practices, in “pure Bodo sur,” he claimed that along with certain Biyahor git, Sukananir git, Huchari git and Bihu also found mention. He claimed that, ‘Madrass, Karnataka etc south Indian sur also influenced and had mixed up with the gaoliya Bodo sur.” Though those ‘sur are almost non-existent, he claimed, but still some could be found in Upper Assam, particularly in some of the songs of Huchori, Bihu Jujona and in ‘Kamrup “in the Modon-Kamdeva’s puja and Aoilya gosain’s puja etc.” The last phase of Kamrupiya Sangit was its declining phase, which he named as the ‘modern,’ or the decline of Kamrupiya Sur.” Claiming that until nineteenth century the Kamrupiya Sangit developed specially in patronization of ‘Koch Kings and at that time, Kamrupiya

32

Sarma Bardoloi, Kamrupiya, 12.

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Sangit made it to a classical, practices, which could have claimed its equal status with other three branches of Indian classical music33. Writing the history of the decline of the Kamrupiya Sangit, he said that during the time of Rudra Singha, some Bengali musician came to Assam and that it was most unlikely that any specialist, talented musician would come to Assam given Assam’s peripheral, remote image in those parts of the world. That is why, he claimed , it was most likely that some lower grade, mediocre musician came to Assam with the new Bengali Rajguru Krisnanathy Bhattacharya, and ‘these people disseminated some very lower grade Bonglua Kirtana, Pachali, Khemta etc in Rangpur, Gargaon region…34.this music slowly influenced Majuli’s main Satras’s and changed the musical sensibilities of Gossain’s and Vaisnava’s of the satras35. So by producing a different but an assimilative project of Kamrupi music, he argued for a new order of Assamese folk life. However, in the category of dance he mainly stressed on the quality of Satriya dances in the classical categories, re-appropriation of Bihu dance and importance of certain local musical instruments etc. This “inclusive,”’, “assimilative” discourse of Kamrupi music dissolved the structural difference between classical and folk which enabled everything to be put under the generic rubric of ‘Kamrupi School,’ which helped in imagining Bihu in a different way. This generic universality had been materially reproduced when the Assam Sangit Natak academy or the Assam music conference started to operate in connection to producing the Kamrupi Music school in the 1950s. The Assam Sangit Natak academy was founded in September 1952 in Shillong, Governor Joyram Doulatram and Bijini queen Sabita Devi were its president and secretary respectively for the “preservation and development of culture” of Assam. However, probably due to its ‘structural weakness,’ as had been argued by Sahitya Sabha in 1952, or its inconsistency in promoting certain ideas that Assamese nationalism was trying to address, Radhagovinda Barooa, the owner of Assam Tribune 33

Sarma Bardoloi, 14. Sarma Bardoloi, 17. 35 Sarma Bardoloi, 17. 34

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and one of the important social entrepreneurs of his time came out to put forward the cause of Kamrupi music instead of the government sponsored Sangit Natak academy. Under his initiative, the All Assam Music conference, in the same line of All India Music Conference started in 1953. However, it was not the branch of the music conference. The generic universality brought closer Bihu and other forms of “classical” music, such as borgit etc in the same platform. Interestingly, in the first conference, the competitions of Bihu and Borgit was put together. In the “ Assamese religious and Folk Songs” competitions, the probable competitions were on, “Borgit, Bongit, Bihu Git, Tokari git, Deh-Bisaror Git, Ai-Nam, Biya-Nam, Dholor Malita, Rag Malita and Bhatima.” While in the musical instruments and dance sections, along with other classical forms and instruments, “Bihu dance and Pepa” playing was also registered for competitions. But due to the poor responses of the competitors, particularly in these “indegenious subjects,” as the organizing committee lamented was inexplixcable, “we can scarcely find out the reason for this.” 36 In his secretarial report, Taranisaron Barooa, had spelled out the aims and objectives of the conference. Stressing the present day need of ‘plans and progress to consolidate, preserve, encourage and develop the distinct Musical arts of Assam was never as urgent and necessary before as it is today.” Claiming that Satras were the “well known repositories of musical traditions like Bargit and other vaisnavite music and dances,” while the Namghars were, “the reservoirs of such folk items of art as the Bhaona or dance-dramas. The Bihu contains other items of musical art, woven into the very life of the people….37’ Thus he declared, ‘the proposed institutes proposes to organize our Musical arts on a healthy and scientific line through research and development with the help and cooperation.. .’ Proposing the conference as the central organization with ‘units all over Assam,’ he declared the basic aims of the conference. Stressing the 36 37

Mahewsar Neog, Jhankar, All Assam Music Conference, 1953-54:31. Dr T.M Barooa, “All Assam Music conference : aims and objects,” in Jhankar,32.

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significance of standardization and preservation of Music like “kirtana ghosa, nam ghosa and the borgit of Sankardeva and Madhavdeva” but since “they are developing on individual lines, without any coordination on the scientific basis, and to standardize them into a distinct pattern throughout Assam is one of the principal aims of the institutions.’ Along with others he also regaling the specific objective for Bihu, he declared, it has its own music, songs and dances,’ ‘… with time this folk art is also falling into disrepute, at least within the educated classes’ so he declared, ‘ this false notion is to be removed, and the art is to be preserved and developed according to the temper of the times.” For the development and cultivation these musical arts, the institution needs a musical journal and a cultural centre with a museum and a library of its own.”38 Declaring Bihu as a national festival of Assam, he argued that: For standardizing the Kamrupi music, a comprehensive project was taken up in the conference. Symposia on various musical traditions, both theoretical and practical demonstration of the genre in presence of well known artists of All India repute were some of the significant features of the conference.

In its second year, the 1954-55 conference, the secretary informed the house how things had been done so far. Delivering his speech this year in Assamese, he declared that ‘for the development of classical music in Assam’, they had tried out two strategies -1. Music conference, exhibition and music competitions through which encouragement could be given to both old and new artists. He claimed that for last year program the ‘famous artists’ encouraged the people to develop a taste in classical music all around Assam, particularly in Guwahati. Secondly, according to the last year proposals, a committee to decide a syllabus for teaching music in Assam was initiated. The committee would by going through the different music schools and Satras teaching structure to ‘prepare a report.’ ‘Though they could not visit the places for various reasons, from letters and informations, they have proposed certain guidelines in this 38

Dr. T. M. Barooah, Jhankar,33.

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regard’, he argued. ‘Fortunately in that meeting’ , he declared, ‘the president of the conference Patbardhanji, the principal of Maris music school, Sri Krisnaryan Jonkor, Musician Birendra Kishor Ray were also present and gave advice39.’ The committee proposed “1. Establishing a music board and through that a syllabus would be structured according to the existing situation. 2. For examination etc a standard and rule bound syllabus. 3. For higher education in Music, a school should be established in Guwahati.

He also mentioned that in the initial days of the music education in Assam, it would be better to follow a recognized, all India institution. So they had decided to follow the syllabus of the ‘Academy of Hindustani Music’ of Luckow of Bhatkhande School. He informed that ‘the syllabus committee had also emphasized on the issue of Asomiya or Kamrupiya Sangit tradition. For proper practices of Kamrupiya School, the committee had created a different syllabus. In this syllabus both classical and folk were given proper attention, ‘so that in the future the students get encouragement and suggestion to do research on it.’ For the local differences of the classical music in Assam, ‘except the modernized song,’ he declared, ‘all the music be recognized as the true music, which is corrupted, which is pure would be decided by the future researcher.’ “The committee’s decision is to learn from the performance of old Uja’s. In future, the able specialist would decide which is true which is false. For now, whatever we get on that would be preservation and research. This is what will be maintained in the syllabus. If a music school decides to instruct in the line of a Majuli Satra, another is from a Mongoldai Uja. Both would be considered correct versions. Only the places of which rituals are being followed are to be examined by the Uja’s of the same.”40

39 40

“Sampadokiya Pratibadon,” Jhankar, All Assam Music conference, 1954-55, 27. “Sampadokiya Pratibadon,” Jhankar, 30.

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So, by not entering in the ensuing debate of which is true and which is not, the conference tried to resolve the question of standardization. Such strategic compromises may have given temporary relief but largely the question had to come up in different ways, particularly on the radio and other gramophone records. This question of authenticity had always instigated debates in various public forums. On the other hand, however, to increase the profile of the Bihu git competition of that had turned up in various parts of Assam as a regular affair; a certain standardization of Bihu git was also needed. An attempt could be seen, when Bishnu Rabha tried to make an elaborate “Swara- Lipi” of some of the Bihu songs. Bishnu Rabha by then had returned from his long years of underground stint as a member of Revolutionary Communist party of India and actively participated in the cultural life of Assam. Both in Assam music conference and Sangit Natak Academy, he was a member of the advisory committee of the Borgit. Famous for his notations of Joytiprasad Agarwala’s songs, Bishnu Rabha maintained the strategy of Assam music conference. However, instead of standardizing or reduce it to one standard “Sur”,’ he had taken pains to elaborate the ‘Bihu juroni’ or the introductory recitation part of Bihu, in its different “sur”structure. The famous Bihu juroni called Otikoi Sanehor Mugare Muhura/Tatukoi Sanahore maku.’ in twelve different ‘structure. Along with that he had made notation of another nineteen Bihu git of the time, which could distinctly be used for competition purpose.41 But such distinctive understanding for multiple structure of Bihu was not happening in the other areas, say Borgit research committee. The major controversies of Borgit was since on the question of standardization. But instead of accepting the different versions Neog or Sangit natak academy looking for singlurity despite opposition from different satras. The Sangit Natak Academy or the Asom Kala Parisad had also operated within the same strategic line of Assam Music conference, at least in terms of the idea of Kamrupi

41

Bishnu Rabha rachanavali, 120-128.

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school of music. Organizing music conferences and competition in various places of Assam, performances of towering personalities of Indian Classical music were some of the important mandates of the academy. Maheswar Neog wrote that “In 1954, in Nagaon music conference of Sangit Natak academy, Musician Uday Sankar and Ananda Sankar after watching the Sattrya dances, recognized it as the fifth dance school of Indian Classical tradition. That was a very significant moment for us.”42 However, such a historical mandate for Sattriya dance or Music or for that matter these new networks between Sattra, State sponsorship was roundly criticized by Sankardeva sangha, a lower class religious movement based on the principles of Sankardeva. To rescue the Vaisnavite religion from casteist, hierarchical Satra domination, the Sangha took a different line. A conceptual unity between Sangha’s strategy and communist peasant movements could be seen in different deployments of idioms in the social but nonetheless Sangha was resisting the new standardization, elite nationalist project of Sankardeva and Vaisnavite practices. The Sangha resisted the plan of “producing a portrait of Sankardeva,” undergovernment intiative. Mainly intiated by the Sangit Natak Academy of Assam but it was largely a brain child of the then Governor of Assam Joyram Das. In the 1955 Jamguri convention of the Sankardeva Sangha, Harimohan Das, in his presidential address, quoted Governor Joyram Das’s lecture on the occasion of the inauguration of Srimanata Sankar Kristi Kendra on 1st of December, 1953, in Shillong where the governor related his project that, “ at least, at four important centers, Ali Pukhuri, Batadrawa, Barpeta and Madhupur,..may be eracted so that in the time to come a visit to such monuments may be a source of inspiration for all devotees and outside visitors.” The Governor justified the initiative saying, “India we have considerable evidence of simple and elegant monuments in memory of men who have molded the people’s religious or social way of life. We, in Assam, should adopt similar

42

Maheswar Neog, Jivanar Digh Aru Bani, 289.

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measures in commemoration of a great man like Shri Sankardev.”43 This typical “visual reproducibility’ of nationalist icons, however, the move was roundly criticized in the specific context of Assam. Despite the fact that Horomohan Das had welcomed the move, the members of the general council of Sankardeva Sangha decided to strike out his discussion of “the letter and portrait of Sankardeva” from the presidential address. 44 Sankardeva Sangha’s particular dislike against the project of inventing the portrait of Sankardeva was articulated elaborately by Mohan Chandra Mahanta, a Mahapurushiya Satradhikar of Jorhat. In a letter to Asomiya, he argued, ‘in the patronization of secular government’, the ‘Sangit –natak academy’ had tried to intervene in some of the religious beliefs of the devotees in Assam. Pointing out that both the initiativespublishing a portrait of Sankardeva and standardization of the Borgit, were related to the affairs of the religion, he argued that Sankardeva was not a writer or poet, he was a Dharmaguru, “Thousands of people of Assam believe him as “Abatari Purush” (incarnation of god). He claimed, “Without any portrait or any statue, his disciples were devoted to him for last five hundred years without any hindrance.” Invoking the Sankardeva’s charita, he argued that, “It is heard from his ‘saint-bhakats’ that after his death, he would be in his ‘Dasama’ and ‘Kirtana’. From that onwards, by keeping his books on the ‘Guru Asan’ the devotees are making obeisance to their Guru.” Arguing that he was against the ‘idol centric’ devotion, he was not very sure why this initiative had been taken up by the Sangit Natak Academy., He declared, “In his religion, he refused idol worship on the first place. That is why; it is beyond our understanding that why after 400 years of his death, it has become necessary to have an imaginative portrait or statue of him.” Madavadeva, his formost disciples, he claimed, declared Sankardeva as an incarnation of the part of God’s body, and after his death, thus, he had been united in the God again. “If the academy produced any portrait or statue of Horomohan das, “Presidential address, 14th Sankardeva sangha yearly convention, Jamugurihat, darrang, 1955,” in Srimanta Sankardeva sanghar Padadhikarsakalar Abhibhasan, (Nagaon: 2005), 28-29. 44 Namghosa,354/43 43

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him” would be against the religious belief.45 The ‘anti-idol worship’ position of Sankardeva in his Vaisnavite preaching in Assam, had been continuously asserted by Sankardeva Sangha. In the 15th Koliabor, Nagaon convention and also the North Lakhimpur convention demanded to put an end to such project as it hurts the ideology of their ‘Guru’ Sankardeva. Delivering his secretarial speech, Gokul Kakati, in the same convention, informed that ‘from some places there are certain portraits of Sankardeva has been in circulation,’ but he hoped, ‘the People who have fantasy for portrait might like these, but I hope, ideologically committed bhakats would not pay attention to such things.” The same went against the new intitative with borgit and Bihu. Mohan Chandra Mahanta, again criticisng these initiatives wrote ‘the academy is also taking Borgit simultaneously with other folk music and tried to standardize the musical quality of it,’ he had claimed that the academy had refused to accept the religious angle of it. ‘Without the ‘religious’ or ‘Bhakotiya’ bhabo, what else will be retained, we do not know,’ he lamented. Pointing out that ‘the Sankari Sattriya dance are also taken as similar to Bihu dance or Naga dance,’ he suggested that the authority was taking the satriya dance as something of a genre performed for the pleasure of the people. Placing borgit in the status of national anthem, he said, ‘for Jatiya (state) and Rastriya (national) anthem people honor them by standing in silence when they are being performed. But for Borgit showing that kind of honor is forgotten now.’ ‘The purity and religious affiliation to the dances and music are trying to be ignored by the modern secular regime of state. … Government and private patronization of standardization of Borgit and satriya nitya might pleasure the audience but without the curtain of dharma, these things would lose its essence.” Instead of any standardization project or any attempt to ‘exhibit’ them in the general stage, he suggested that they be performed in the religious gatherings like ‘Borsobah, Bhaona’ etc. Thus the original objective of their ‘creation and Mohan Chandra Mahanta, “Asom Sangit Natak academy aru Sankari Kola: Letter to the editor,” Asomiya, April 24, 1954. 45

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preservation’ could be retained.46 Such bifurcation between folk and classical might sound problematic but in the larger context of the growing networks between satra and state, Sangha’s discourse was to maintain the purity of the Sankardeva and his teachings rather than the institutions or rituals that claimed to be the owner of Sankardeva tradition. In the wake of State reorganization, Gokul Kakati, in his secretarial report of the 15th Koliabor, Nagaon convention,Criticizing the role of Satra in this regard, he said that instead of his ideology and work of unification of Assamese nationality, the Satradhikars only tried to get royal patronage and their snobbery have become harmful in the unity and integrity of the Assamese nationality. “What was the reason of creating thousands of Kauliya Bhakats in these four royal Satras? Instead of publicizing the teaching of both the Gurus in hills and plains, they are enjoying their life, they have created a religious imperialism. Therefore what happened to Assam we all knew.” 47 But the growing connection between folk and classic was also reproduced differently in the material world of the social. Tirthanath Goswami, the Satradhikar of Dhalar Satra, Jorhat, published a book called, Namghar in 1950 which tried to create a new relation ship between Namghar and Bihu. 48. Writing about the present and past of the namghar, Gowsami tried to link Namghar with the yearly agricultural circle of Assam. ‘In the initial stage of the yearly agricultural cycle,’ he claimed that the peasant would take vow that after giving a portion of product to ‘Guru, Bhakat, Brahman, Good fellow, guest, Beggars and in different social festivals like prayers (Sewa), Sokam, Nihkam, he would take the rest for him and his family. According to that tradition, he claimed that, the new produces would be offered to guru and Bhakats and give new paddy products to offer as ‘mah46

(Sri Mohan Chandra mahanta, (p-292) Jorhat , 29 jath, 1954)

47

333 Sri Sri Tirthanath Gowsami pravhu, Namghar(Jorhat: Dhalarsatra Puthibharla, 1950), 3.

48

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prasad’ in the namghar. After that, he suggested, all the members of the villages would fist with the ‘nao-saul’ in the namghar. ‘And in that way,’ he claimed that ‘the whole gaon would seem like one household.’ But in the present time, he argued that these important rituals of social bonding had been forgotten. Concentrating on the relatives, he claimed that people had forgotten the importance of Bhakat, Vaisnava, fellow villagers, neighbours, namghar,Gurughar in their lives. That is why, he claimed that ‘the peasant who after taking his vows, does not offer anything and consumes alone his product is a thief, a sinner.’ These are the reason he claimed that people had to be desperate for food, there is a scarcity of vegetable and fish…famine comes to the nation.’ However, though these kind of offerings had seen as the oppressive structure of ‘guru-ghar’ in the more recent part of the century, in that phase at least for Gowsami a way out to produce a more coherent social sponsorship structure. Linking a strict relationship with Bihu and namghar, he claimed that in the ‘three Bihu’ offerings of ‘mah-prasad,’ villagers pray before god by performing nam-Kirtana. In the present, he lamented instead of that the namghar was ignored on the Bihu day. He claimed that today, ‘not even mah-prasad, the lighting of sola-bonti on the day had not been seen.’ He said, ‘ along with children and wife enjoying foods like sandoh, sira, pitha, Gur, Milk, a person’s offering prayer to Mahapurush during the Bihu day is completed.’ Arguing that, this kind of ignorance actually helped in creating a situation of scarcity, diseases and sordid status of life in the society. In the days of fortune, one who makes supplicate to God sincerely Goes the bad days forever as the God saves him from unfortunates. But the one who offers prayer only in the days of unfortunate Which sastras says the God will forgive him?

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Arguing that ‘in the days of fortune, not offering prayer to God’ is almost similar to making fun of Sankardeva and Madhavdeva,49 in a different section titled ‘Namghar Juge Bihu’ (Bihu celebration through Namghar), he discussed the importance and significance of ‘niskarmi50’ offerings in social life. Claiming that ‘the rituals of niskarmi offerings was advised by Sankardeva in three Bihus,’ he argued that in the Bohag Bihu people would first gather in the namghar and performs nam and ‘after that only they would do other merry making, feasting, etc.’ Narrating the rituals of Magh or Bhogali Bihu, he said, ‘knowledgeable people used to make a ‘meji’ near namghar and only near the namghar they organize the feast on the night of uruka of the Magh Bihu. Sometime only due to lack of water, they would have to organize it somewhere else. The people who organize the feast near the namghar used to perform nam in the namghar and after that they would sit for the dinner. The gayan and bayan used to perform hira and uthua nam through the night in the namghar. In the evening at the time of performing the ‘chaki ritual’ the ‘joydhani’ would be given and by doing that it purifies the food of the meal. The children would advise others to say ‘joy ram,’ then the other would say not just ‘ram’ but also ‘joy hari.’ The practice of one urges other to say “Ram” and in return the other would be urged to say “…is always best.” The utterance connects between God’s name Hari and Ram and that ritual purifies everyone. Moreover, through that, listening and recitation both happen. One’s ‘Joi Hari’ is other’s listening and their ‘Joy Hari’ is recitation.51 Criticizing the ritual of buying salt and sharing among the members of the Huchori group from the huchori earnings during Bihu, Goswami argued that ‘the persons who are dumb, deaf, physically challaenged, widow, older people have not abandoned food due to lack of salt. The jati who does not have huchori rituals or the poor who need to sleep empty stomach have the scarcity of food, not the salt. Why then, will God not 49

Goswami Pravu, 13. Niskarmi prayer is something where one offers his prayers without expecting any return. 51 Goswami Pravu,24-25. 50

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consider them as sinner, who have some substances still ate salt from huchori earnings. The practice in which the people, who have no scarcity of food and water, are extorting money from the people through Huchori, only to eat salt, is definitely an unrule.” He further stressed that, ‘ in such a sacred day like first of Bohag, the people who go around singing and dancing for just the purpose of begging to consume salt, won’t God make them suffer from scarcity of food and water ?’ He claimed that following the old tradition, if the people serve the God and Bhakats from the earnings of the Huchori, the would get the ‘puniya’ from it. He said, “They are the saints who use the remaining money in reconstruction of Namghar. The people who are considered ‘Devota,’-the other worldly being, who spend the huchori earnings in buying goods that are important for the community, and build the village namghar permanently. At least the people who, by saving by 12/14 years of huchoori earnings renovate the namghar building permanently and reduce the scarcity of the community goods are knowledgeable saints that is why they will live in the holy Boikuntha, heaven. From such a huchori group, the patrons get fortune, share one third of the ‘punya’ of the members of the Huchori group.” Making a hierarchy between individual namghars, village namghars and Satra namghars, he stressed the importance of the ‘Doba,’ the giant drum in the satra namghar. Saying that there was a tendency that ‘whatever the condition of the namghar, everyone is interested in placing a doba in it,’ he claimed that ‘satva, rojo, tomoh,’ these three ‘guna’ only resides in Satra namghars. But in the present situation, he said, rather than following the significance of doba playing at the appropriate time, the ‘doba’ was playing in times when it should not have been played, like a ‘Bihu dhul,’ in the village namghars. Thus, he suggested that one should respect the significance of the rituals of its playing52.

52

Goswami Pravu,29-30.

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In a different section, speaking about the ‘Bhur Tal or Bhut tal,’ the musical instrument mainly used in the ‘nam-kirtana’ performance, he claimed that, the ‘mahapurush’s religion was like a highway, where everyone can come and join and that is why the ‘Naga, Miri, Mikir, Garo, Yabana, Bhut’ etc nationality could convert themselves to it. In the process, many ‘jati’ had brought their ‘jatiyo-bojona’ or ‘community musical instrument.’ Claiming that the ‘bhut’ or the Bhutiyas had brought the ‘tal’ to the neovaisnavite tradition, the original ‘bhut-tal’ was now called as ‘bhur-tal.’ Invoking the importance of the guru and in this case satradhikar, he claimed that ‘Bhagaban said to Arjuna that even by clapping of hands while performing nam, the bhakats could buy him. If it is true then what is the importance of the tal in the performance of nam? That is because there is a connection between nam and tal, and he who understands this connection from the guru has received the privilege of playing the tal. Those who do not do not play. Moreover, those who are not Bhakats or have been outcast from society cannot play53.” Making a connection between the tal and the Satra, he claimed that ‘according to the satradhikars, one should first offer one pairs of tal to the guru and only after that he should play the other pair. Some people have done it, some did not. Since some persons could not arrange two pairs of tal, they had to abandon the idea of playing tal. Some ‘nam logua bhakat’ play it without the order of the guru.’ Refuting some discourse that the Satradhikars stressed on this ritual only because they wanted to increase the number of tals in their possession, he claimed that, ‘the one who believes his soul bounds within the guru’s namghar, which is like boikuntha, in his death bed escapes from the wretched Yamaduta54.’ Describing the importance of the ‘tal’ in the structure of the ‘nam-prasanga,’ he argued , ‘there are three kinds of Namprasanga. Within the satva guna, if it is sweet and soothing, the significance is infinite. In the ‘ruju guna,’ the sound of the tal is soothing 53 54

Goswami Pravu, 31. Goswami Pravu, 32.

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and has to block other sounds in the ear. In the tamuguna, the bur tal is played with doba and nagara. By playing, it should captivate people, particularly the people who do not have any interest in it55.” However, around 1954-55, after this radical shift the Sangha, with stress on independent village namghar, tried to project itself completely from the Sanhati structure. Dimbeswar Neog, literary critic and also one of the Podadhikars of Sangha had mentioned this trend explicitly. Published in Namdharma, his presidential speech in the birth anniversary of Sankardeva in Charigaon, in 1955, named ‘Sou Satya Yuga,’ he said, “One of the significant features of Sankardeva’s socialism was he stopped the oppression of the priest from the society. The Children of God, all human beings are equal, but to offer prayer to their father, they do not have the rights. To do that they need mediators of another jati. These kind of Sastras had been burnt by the flames of the nam dharma of Sankardeva. The purest Dharma is Nam Kirtana. Everyone has the right over it That is why Harinama is the king of all the Dharma This what tells by the Sastras

One may say that to destroy the priest from the society, he had instilled another oppressive structure of Guru and Gosains. But this is not true, this is an unwanted result, a byproduct56.” Making a metaphorical connection between the Satra and commercial shops, he said that , “therefore, it is no doubt that like religious shops, the Satras and their hereditary businessman, the Guru and gosains have been turned up only after Sankardeva and Madhavadeva. In the religion of Sankardeva the base of the democracy is the Assamese namghar. After coming back from his first pilgrimage, giving up the office of the ‘sirumoni Bhuyan’ Sankardea ordered Ram Rai to build

55 56

Goswami Pravu,33. Goswami Pravu, 379.

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Namghar, that namghar is the democratic Satra –house57.” Claiming that in the earlier time, ‘whether it is called namghar or Satra ghar in that time these democratic institutions were the centre of religious learning. Today from length and breadth of Assam, there is no scarcity of satras, but one would notice that like a spider web how these democratic institutions changed themselves into a capitalist structure…these halfeducated Satradhikars would condmen society to an infinitely grim future, they cannot provide a way out.” ‘That is why, he suggested, “Assamese namghar, the real democratic institutions should be revised and with respective persons, the ‘o soroniya’ people should be given ‘soron.” However, he cautioned, that nobody would get ‘sorono’ from one individual, he would get ‘soron’ only in the presence of one nam, one deo (Sri Krisna), one Guru ( Sri Sankardeva), and Bhakats who are loyal to Bhakti. In ‘osoroniya’ there might be some issues of ‘jati-barna’ but in the case of ‘soroniya,’ purified bhakata, there should not be any discrimination over jati and Barna58” Connecting the idea of satya yuga with socialism, he declared, “from time immemorial, people dream about the golden days of Satya yuga. But what is the characterstic of satya yuga? Where the citizen are just, truthful, well educated, well civilized, considerate, where there is no oppression from ‘Roja Ghar’,’ ‘Guru Ghar,’ where by putting mask of education, for self-interest nobody gives false claim of religion, or the ‘patriotism’ to sell the nation-that is satya yuga. Where the guru-gosain, educated, leaders all are servant of the people, where the people is the king –that is Satya yuga. This humble self heard the echo of the first light of the Satya yuga morning, the humble self with his intuation sees the return of the satya yuga59.”

57

Goswami Pravu, 380. Goswami Pravu, 381. 59 Goswami Pravu,381. 58

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AGRICULTURE, LABOUR AND THE LEFT NATIONALIST MOMENT OF BIHU

Just after the revolutionary communist party’s popular peasant insurgency (1948-1952) in the rural areas of Assam, a shift in the Assamese nationalist circle could be witnessed. The influential journal of 1920s, Avahan, shifted to a more radical version and tried to represent altogether different agendas of the peasantry and masses rather than its usual stress on the Assamese nation. Of course, contemporary nationalist writers would still write in the journal but its radical shift in appearance produced a new space to contest the claims of nationalist hegemony. Representing such radical contestation, one Jiban Chandra Barua wrote a piece in Avhan in 1954 criticizing the attitudes of the Assamese elite and their rule in Bihutolis. Intelligently titled “Bihutolit McCarthy,60” stressing that the contemporary time as the moment for people’s awakening, he declared that Bihu’s history needed to be discovered within the centre of a resurgent people’s culture. This new understanding of the popular, however, was based on two incidents, which, as he claimed as the examples of Assamese nationalist elites’ arrogant cultural policing of Bihutolis. Claiming that in one such Bihutoli, Bishnu Rabha, the veteran artist and leader of the RCPI peasant insurgency, was not allowed to perform one of his songs, though the theme of the song was Bohag. The same situation was faced by Bhupen Hazarika, then a member of Indian People’ theatre Association. He was also restricted to perform a Bihu song that he himself wrote, just on an excuse that there was lack of time for his performance. Barua, citing them as examples, claimed that Assamese elite, like any bourgeois, subscribed to a notion of art as an item for luxury, pleasure, “to be displayed in museums.” They thought, art should not bother about the harsh realities of the society. However, contrary to their belief, Bihu songs always reflected upon social reality. Along with celebrating natural beauty and man-woman love, he claimed, they

60

Jiban Chandra Barua, “Bihutolit McCarthy,”, Avahan, 25, no. 2, 1954: 114-116.

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have also highlighted changes in society, reflected social cruelty, exploitation and hardship of the lower classes. He cited the examples of how Bihu was considered in nineteenth-century English-educated Assamese elites as vulgar and obscene and ravaged by the colonial exploitation in the villages was marred by purposelessness and distortion. According to Barua, during the national movement of 1920-21, a cultural resurgence occurred; it helped in the introduction and acceptance of Bihu among the urban elite. However, giving a class angle to it, he declared that the national cultural consciousness was not accompanied by a “people’s awakening.” However, Barua’s contemporary time was a time of possibility to transform that cultural consciousness into people’s awakening. That is why, he asserted, Bihutolis were turning into a place for amalgamation of different classes and communities in a mass formation. Within this formation, Barua claimed that, Bhupen Hazarika’s song drew a direct linage from the unknown village poets of traditional Bihu songs. Barua supported his argument with few examples making a comparison between the ideological structure of Bihu songs and Bhupen Hazarika’s songs. Giving an example of “unknown poet,” he said that the “unknown poet had written:” Bihuwati bird whistle around, ‘Bihu, Bihu’ We do not have clothes for this Bihu. Bhupen Hazarika, ‘the balladeer of people’s life’ echoes these words laden with contemporary reality: One or two has built factory Clothes are produced in bulk Silk has arrived be aeroplane Nevertheless, we do not have clothes for this Bihu

He also pointed out, if the traditional Bihu song had reflected upon the devastation of the landscape and human character brought upon the coloniser’s tea plantations and the introduction of poppy cultivation, the contemporary singer too engaged with the 185

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warmongering of the imperial project. The contemporary balladeer would also inscribe, in his song in Bihu’s rhythm, the elite’s attempt to neglect this historical lineage of Bihu: That we do not have clothes for the Bihu Do not sing Bongeet like this. If you sing such songs speaking the truth, The Dhuti-clad ‘sahab’ Will lynch you. To speak truth is such a sickness Have not I told you so? -- Just look at the fun, Rongmon

Barua, at the end, challenging the “new MaCarthys” among the Assamese elites, declared that they would not be successful in restricting the “moving river of Assamese people’s culture” with their imaginary artistic standards. He claimed that not just the thousands of peasant, workers recognized these new, real songs but had been accepted by the young and old, students and professors. These true real songs, he hoped, one day again would be pervasive in the Bihutolis . However, this new ascendency of Bihu songs as the reflection of the social exploitation of the lower classes and their modern representation by the “people’s singer,” emerged a new discourse of agriculture and labour that eventually challenged the elite nationalist version of Bihu as the symbol of pristine Assamese peasant life. Questioning such a moral universe, these new discourses stressed Bihu as the representation of lower classes struggles against the exploitation or reflection of their everyday struggle to survive. The discourses of peasant insurgency, the struggle against the petty absentee landlords which mainly consisted of the Assamese middle-class now became the focused criticism of these new imaginations. Instead of urban, absentee “dangariyas” and their Assamese “gaoliyas” the toiling masses had built through their blood and sweat and resistance against the

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exploitation a culture of their own. These new constitutions soon found a figure that connected this new discursive regime. Moghai, as he was called, belonged to a poor peasant family near Jorhat town. But his ingenious Dhul performance was finally discovered by Hemago Biswas, then the secrtary of IPTA, Assam unit and he eventually took him to the IPTA stage. Remembering him as his greatest discovery in his artist life, Oja mediated between that discursive structure of agriculture and labour. Himself a poor peasant, but with his indegenious dhul performance, he represented the oppressive, abstract figure of the Assamese peasantry. Instead of the elite nationalist fantasy over Bihu and peasant life, he with his dhul would speak the language of the political. He would perform: The people are crying, O the Dangariyas The nation is crying, You got the power from the people Why would you forget that 61

The memories, reports on Moghai’s performances always invoked his physical ability of performance. His physical maneuvering, his ingenunity of performance actually represented that distinct, deep connection with his everyday life in the agrarian and labour structure. Such embedded figure of Bihu and its relationship with the question of agrarian labour context shifted Bihu’s imagination into a new dimension. A reportage of IPTA, Assam unit’s yearly provincial conference of 1955 in Guwahati highlighted this aspect of Ojha’ performance. Folk performances, people’s song, plays, painting exhibitions, etc. were features of the cultural programmes. A procession was also held accompanied by songs such as Jyotiprasad Agarwala’s ‘Biswabijoyi Najowan’. But the main aspect of the writing was Moghai Oja’s performance. The author himself was impressed by Ojha’s physical ability associated with dhul playing, as he

61

Hemango Biswas, Hemango Biswas Rachanavali, ed. Paramananda Majumdar (Guwahati: Publication Board Assam, 2008), 955.

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played the dhul not only with his hands but also with his chin. The write-up itself started with the title – dhiniki dhindao, dhutorire dhol bao (Dhiniki dhindao, I play dhol with my chin). After the performance Maharashtra’s artist Amar Sheikh and Balraj Sahani picked Ojha up on their shoulders. Finally, in the report, the author concluded, Moghai Oja’s ”appreciation was a marker of the Assamese peasant artists’ acceptance by all of India.” Such appreciation and his deep connection with the real material world, the world of paddy fields and physical labour continued. Informing the response Oja generated from the crowd, Hemango Biswas wrote, to IPTA’s Bengal state convention of 1954, I have taken Dr Bhupen Hazarika and Maghai Ojha. The voice of Hazarika and the dhul of Maghai produced a new identity of Assam.. Famous classical Music artist, Gyan Prakash Ghosh told me that ‘Maghai’s dhul is outside of our classical grammar, it is an indigenous object of soil and paddy fields.” (p-133)

This is the new moment where Bihu was now capitalizing a very different identity. Instead of veracity, it has spoken the anthropology of the paddy fields and the sweaty peasants within it. This shift in the articulation of culture as such actually helped thinking about culture in general and Assamese culture as such. It was also a moment when different people including newly established Gauhati University, people like Birinchi Kumar Barua, Prafulladatta Gowsami were articulating the folklore narrative of Assamese peasant life. Prafulladatta Gowsami’s pioneering 1954 work named, Folk Literature of Assam’ was academically engaed with the question of “Culture.” “Culture” as he claimed, was “the basic customs and traditions, rites and rituals which together foster a certain social pattern and a certain outlook among people living in a certain area.”62 However, this specific social pattern constituted in “Assamese culture”, was “Aryan culture”, or “Assamese language itself is Sanskritic” but the “distinctive

62

Prafulladatta Gowsami, The Folk Literature of Assam (Gauhati: Lawyers Book Stall, 1954), 9.

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features of Assamese culture are seen in the modification effected by racial fusion.” 63 Such a nationalist and elitist perception of Assamese culture and the popular was, however, more radically appropriated by Jyotiprasad Agarwalla and Bishnu Prasad Rabha. Both had been part of the radical moments, in Jyotiprasad case, IPTA after independence, and Bishnu Rabha had joined the RCPI peasant insurgency and after that throughout his life, he was part of various radical moments. Given in the first convention of “Asam Silphi Sangha,” Jyotiprasad’s presidential speech in 1948 is regarded as one of the best works of Assamese literature. In the speech Jyotiprasad distinguished the idea of culture into two domains—the Sanskriti that symbolized all the good qualities of human life and their influence over the everyday of the social, while making a dialectical approach, he articulated the category called ‘Oposanskriti,” In a somewhat dialectical relationship, by fighting with “oposanskriti,’ Sanskriti transformed itself, along with transforming the society. Making an allegorical connection with “Krishna”, from the Indian mythology, he argued that Krishna actually embodied all the good values of Indian culture. Representing the “Sanskriti,” he had fought against the “oposanskriti” and through the process produced a new sanskriti. This transformative capacity of sanskriti had conection with the contemporary Assamese politics, the radical peasant struggle or the discourse of revolution itself was largely articulated through it. Alluding to a materialist understanding, he declared that this “Krishna” culture would get strength through the fight against the oppressors. Giving examples of Krisna’s role in Mahabharata, the Gandhian Jyotiprasad argued in that in this giant fight between Sanskri and oposanskriti, Krisana joined the pandava, the symbol of Sanskriti. In Sanskriti’s final struggle against the oposanskriti, Jyotiprasad claimed, “the war could not be wage only with moral strength. It had to take arms to become ‘Krisna-Arjun.” (p-463) This transformative essentialism, no need to tell, had

63

Gowsami, The Folk, 9.

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become the new understanding of Bihu or for that matter any cultural activities. Bishunu Rabha, however, taking a cue from materialist evolutionary discourse, developed the idea of “Kristi” from a very different angle. In his presidential speech of the cultural programme of the first conference of “Assam Tribal Sangha,” in Khuang, Dibrugarh in 1947, he said, “many times we have told that the alternative name of “Kristi” is “tillage of the land.(krishi karshon)” However not just the agricultural activities or “tillage of the land,” was Kristi,” he argued. The human aesthetic values, the representation and refelection of their creative genious-all could be articulated as “Kristi,” he declared. Giving some kind of evolutionary biography he said “when these “Kristi” was standardized it became “Sanskriti” and when it was influenced by foreign elements it became “Culture.” But he declared , “this culture could restrict the growth of the original “Kristi” and finally, it could kill the Kristi itself.” But Rabha’s articulation of these hierarchical worlds, did find a new meaning when he said that, “ Poem, music, art, philosophy, ideas, perspective, rituals, civility everything is generally called Kristi or Sanskriti or culture.” But, he declared, “These all are articulated in the womb of Kristi but the objects that born from material need of human life, in the struggle of the mankind the objects which gave real streagth..are real Kristi, real sanskriti, “real Culture.” That means the real, material essence of culture is related to the human and this case related to the struggle of the peasant life. Instead of pleasure, it expressed the struggle, the tales of the oppressed, their everyday labouring world. In such connotation, Bihu’s originality as an exotic veracity of Assamese nation displaced to a new identity which was mediated through the “agriculture and labour “discourse. Such new pervarance did one thing best. At least, during the time of the Such new pervarance did one thing best. At least, during the time of the conflict and contestation this new commensurable identity helped resolve issues. By 1960s with growing pressure from the Assamese nationalist circle to declare the Assamese language as the official language of both the valley created a difficult atmosphere in Assam. With 190

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certain communal rioting the situation became worst day by day. Then IPTA with Hemgao Biswas leadership decided to visit entire Brahmaputra valley on a good will mission with songs and music to calm the conflicting weather. Bhupen Hazarika joined in. Hazarika and Hemango’s song “Haradhan aru Rangmanr kotha” celebrating the “agriculture and Labour discourse” developed a new commensurable position between Assamese and Bengali community. What joy, comrade, what joy What joy, comrade, what joy. You dance Bihu and I will clap for you Bihu and Bhatiali will thus mingle With our chorus and with the love from our bosom We will build this country again64

Hemanga Biswas own work called “Asam Bengalor Lukogit Samikhya” was not outside of that commonsurability of labour and Agrrarian discourse. Through different anthropological understanding between “agrarian similarities,” labour and their particular specificity of engagement with the world, he discussed as glaring example of solidarity between Assamese Bihu and different Bengali folk music of Bengal. 65 Interestingly in the 1970s when the Marxist historians engaged with the Maomoria revolt, through this idea of agriculture and labour, the whole moment was articulated as the question of class conflict.

64 65

Cf. Haradhon Rangmon Katha-A tale of two icons, Ed. Rangili Biswas(New Delhi: I write imprint, 2017) 25 Cf. Hemango Biswas Rachanawali, ed. Paramananda Majumdar ( Guwahati: Assam Pyublication Board, 2008)

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Powers of Spectacularity: Bihu in the Times of Insurgency and After

The early and mid-nineteenth-century discussions of Bihu had changed after 1980s. Not just in terms of Structure and performance, but also as a social site of engagement. In this chapter, we will discuss four discursive constitutions of subject and their articulation through Bihu. We started in 1980s, particularly in the Assam movement and traced how through its crucial reliance on spectacularity – in order to identify and understand the shift in the Assamese nationalist paradigm in the populist context of postcolonial electoral democracy. Such strategic reliance over spectaularity, produced a conceptual unity between the spectacle of rioting in the real material world and its effective constitution on the Bihu stage as the constitution of the “raij” as the sentinel, guardian of the Assamese social. Secondly, we also discussed the new constitution of the musical instruments and discussed how the effective investment in the Bihu symbols bestrode the repertoire of death, life and memory in a complex and uneven manner. In the second section we discussed, 1990s or the ULFA moment and how effectively the question of donation or for that matter, the question of national capital

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and Hindi imperialism was constituted through Bihu or by investing other Bihu symbols. A discursive attempt of producing a new kind of “natural” economy outside the purview of neo-liberalism or its agents the so called Hindi imperialist, how different effective techniques were organized which finally led to a restructuring of sponsorship mechanism between so called local and outsiders. In the third section we discussed the idea of tribal Bihu and how different dichotomy constituted a shifting understanding of subjects producing an eternal tension between primitive and modern. The specificity of such dichotomy was not outside of the purview of the Assamese nation. But the production of such dichotomy constituted the relationship between Bihu and its primitive nomenclature, at the same time articulating the need of a specific constitution of modern tribal subject within it. The final section discussed the standardization moment of Bihu. We discussed how different specific strategic maneuver, productive tensions have actually constituted the standard version of Bihu in 1980s. The idea of disciplined subject, their particular structuring within the Bihu stage was discussed and finally, how the constant need of veracity of forms and performitive structure, its supposed connection with the real, material agricultural world constituted a new kind of ethnographic reliability which often colludes with the local strategy of primitive and modern.

SPECTACULARITY AND DISCIPLINARITY: THE ASSAM MOVEMENT AND BIHU

On 26 April 1982, Homen Borgohain, a Sahitya Akademi Award winning Assamese writer and journalist, published an article entitled, “Asom Andolonor Rajnitie Bihuku ku Sparsa Karise” (‘The Politics of the Assam Movement Has Also Touched Bihu’) in a Calcutta newspaper Aajkal. Borgohain was openly critical of the Assam Movement, a series of mass agitations coordinated by the All-Assam Students’ Union (AASU) and

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the All-Assam Gana Sangram Parishad against the influx of ‘illegal immigrants’ in Assam, which was already in its third year. In the struggle against the outsiders, the situation in Assamese society has gone to such an extent that Bihu, the festival that unites everyone, is becoming a tool of politics. Originally an agrarian festival, Bihu was, until recently, a festival exclusively of village life. But after independence, some townsfolk babus dragged it to the pleasure-stage of towns. Whether the result of this new shift is good or bad, one thing is clear: it benefitted the professional singers and dancers. During the ten to fifteen days when it is observed, these singers and dancers earn a substantial amount of money for stage performances. This year, just before Bihu, the leaders of the Assam Movement dictated that the artists who opposed the movement could not perform on the Bihu stage. Bihu is basically a festival of unity. Forgetting everything, brothers who have been separated over some petty family issues feast together on this day. Even the enemy is forgiven on this day. But rejecting this kind of tradition, the leaders of the Assam Movement have been keen on maintaining enmity, hatred and separation on the day of Bihu. Many, of course, protested. Even some of the supporters of the movement protested. But today most in the Assamese society have decided to be numb. They receive orders from a self-styled authority and they just follow them without a question. In this way, no one has to take any risk.1

The readers of this thesis will find Borgohain’s lament somewhat misplaced. The simplistic claim that Bihu, for the first time in the 1980s, was being ‘politicized’ for disagreeable ends by the machinations of a “self-styled authority” only naturalizes the early nationalist romanticization of the festival. I have tried to demonstrate that at least since its emergence in the colonial archive, Bihu had been consistently, albeit differently and severally, a site of political contestations. However, something did change at this point. 1

Homen Borgohain, Asir Dasakar Dastabez (Guwahati: Banimandir, 2001), 11-12.

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The Assam Movement started in 1979 with the express demand of rectifying electoral rolls and compelling the Government of India to identify and expel the ‘illegal immigrants’ from Assam and provide adequate institutional safeguards to the rights and livelihoods of the Assamese people. In an eventful span of six years, the Movement varied in intensity and tempo, at times leading to extreme cases of rioting and violence. Much has been written on its causes and effects, its social composition and political character.2 However, in this section, through critically tracking its engagement with Bihu, I would like to draw attention to one of the relatively overlooked aspect of the Movement – its crucial reliance on spectacularity – in order to identify and understand the shift in the Assamese nationalist paradigm in the populist context of postcolonial electoral democracy. Staging the crowd, indeed, was an integral part of the Movement’s mobilization strategies which were, of course, several and at times internally contradictory. The overflowing mass meetings, the serpentine lines of masses in processions, and the coming together of thousands of people on the streets to break the governmentimposed curfew remain some of the most arresting images of the Assam Movement. The unprecedented numerousness of the protesting crowd was hardwired by a coordinated set of quotidian social strategies, ranging from social boycott and public humiliation to indoctrination campaigns and citizens’ curfew. In this mutually reinforcing play between spectacularity and disciplinarity, the nationalist politics of subjectivation was undergoing a critical transformation. The new nationalist subject of the Assam Movement had to both constitute and perform the spectacle. The fusion of thousands of bodies within a single optic frame was not merely a propaganda technique; the emphasis on the performative also raized the function of the nationalist 2

An enormous literature exists on the subject. For different aspects of the Assam Movement, see Sanjib Baruah, “Immigration, Ethnic Conflict, and Political Turmoil – Assam, 1979-1985,” Asian Survey, 26, no. 11 (1986): 11841206; Monirul Hussain, The Assam Movement: Class, Ideology, and Identity (Delhi: Manak, 1993); Makiko Kimura, The Nellie Massacre of 1983: Agency of Rioters (New Delhi: Sage, 2013).

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subject from being a faceless digit in the census rolls to the embodied visibility of agitators and marchers. This transformation set in a spectrum of new political possibilities which were not necessarily exhausted by the Movement itself. Bihu played a critical role in this functional arithmetic. The Bihu stage, or more particularly, the urban Bihu grounds were restructured as the corollary of the movement, its achievements, and sacrifices and most importantly, to articulate the cumulative might of the Assamese nation in the face of state repression and violence. The urban Bihu gatherings were also seen as an accumulative possibility, a pool of wealth that could be distributed, if necessary, in other areas of national interest. In the absence of a wealthy national bourgeoisie, for the burden of sponsorship they turned to the Bihu gatherings. Borgohain was right in pointing out that the Bihu gatherings helped some professional artists to make substantial amount of money. Without a regular music industry, with radio and a very few cultural gatherings in other times of the year, it was the Bihu stage that provided a substantial amount of sponsorship to these artists. The contribution of the Assam Movement was that it standardized a representative structure for the Assamese nation and fixed it within the Bihu stage, while placing the audience in a state of constant vigil. Perhaps that is why, for the predominance of Bihu and the politics of vigilance, other cultural programs of the year, particularly of the variety functions type characterized by the domination of western performing local bands of the pre-Assam movement days were slowly pushed into oblivion. The authority of the nation had been achieved through the strategy of social boycott, articulation of mob psyche and through the threat of violence. Two harrowing give an idea of the impact and influence of the tactics of organization and mobilization. Professor Hiren Gohain, another sworn critic of the Movement in its first three years, wrote about the effectiveness of tactics like social boycott, In the rural areas, the left-minded people had no security. Ajit Das could not bypass the abuses he faced and this talented, studious professor was in 196

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depression for a very long period of time even after the Movement got over. Professor Ramesh Kalita of Tezpur College had also received the same [treatment]… This manufactured strategy of social ostracism was an efficient mechanism to break the morale of those against the Assam Movement.3

Gohain described how the mobilized mob ransacked the dissenters’ houses and demanded immediate switch of loyalty, as intimidatingly large crowds of furious men and women stationed themselves in their front yards. He also lashed out at the lack of plan and resistance of the left parties: Niranjan Talukdar, was a young, spirited activist from Bahjani village. He also had become some kind of an enemy of the villagers. On the day of election, the villagers and some outside people surrounded his house and asked him to resign from the CPI(M), the so-called unpatriotic, anti-Assamese party. Only he and his old mother were in the house at that time. Despite the looming threats of the mob, he somehow slipped out from the house and twice went out and called up the party office desperately seeking help. But the party leaders’ response to him was simply ‘stand up, stand up.’ Till the end, he maintained the party discipline and did not resign. ... His mother tried to protect him, but those goons pulled him up and cut him into pieces in front of his mother’s eyes.4 The cumulative impact of incidents such as this was enormous, and the morale of the opposition was broken quite quickly. The vigilantism of the mob reached its height in the first half of 1983, when the Movement’s official stance of non-violence was obscured by strings of riots in different parts of Assam. Whether they were complicit or not, the organizational leadership as a rule formally distanced itself from such actions which, in turn, caused disgruntlement within the ranks. In a recent ethnography on the Nellie massacre of 1983, particularly amongst the Tiwa community, where on an official count

3 4

Hiren Gohain, Iman Tita Sagarar Pani (Guwahati: Author, 2011) ,176. Gohain, Iman Tita, 180-81.

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almost 2200 Bengali Muslims were killed in arguably the worst riot ever in the history of post-Partition South Asia, Makiko Kimura documents how deeply the rioters felt that they had been deceived by the AASU leadership who disavowed any responsibility for the incident.5 Such disavowals were often articulated through a diction of blaming the primitive, emphasizing the gap between the respectable and legitimate ideological structure of the movement and its misunderstanding and distortion in particular cases of implementation. However, an unofficial, confidential communiqué circulating within the Movement can provide illustration of the techniques adopted by the Movement strategists to bring into being popular outbursts. Allegedly, this secret circular carried a set of instructions from the Assam Movement’s leadership: 1. There should be a secret committee with one-man leadership which will organize and establish different committees in a place. 2. Donation drives. 3. The Assamese politicians, political middlemen, government servants, and oppressors who work against the committee should be identified. 4. The same should go for the non-Assamese. 5. A date should be fixed for organizing a local people’s court to give verdict on them. 6. An effort should be made to create solidarity between the north-eastern indigenous peoples like Naga, Mizo, Manipuri, and from Meghalaya, Arunachal [Pradesh], Tripura, and try to develop the area like brothers in arms. 7. Disrupt the railway connection between Bodorpur and Lumding and isolate the Cachar district from Assam. With population exchange programmes, the Bengalis of the Brahmaputra valley should be rehabilitated in Cachar.

5

Makiko Kimura, The Nellie Massacre of 1983: Agency of Rioters ( Delhi: Sage,2013), 121-122.

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8. The Bengali-dominated Lumding town should be isolated in each and every way. 9. The Assamese Muslims should not have any relations with the Bengali Muslims. Even the religious connections between them should be stopped. 10. The Bengali Hindus should stop the work of annexing Assam as a part of larger Bengal. The Bengali Muslims should also stop the plan to make Assam a Muslim state. They should not forget the rioting of Aligarh, Jamshedpur, Nadiya, etc and also be aware that RSS is working against them. 11. The Bengali Hindus and Muslims should be stopped from contesting in the elections. They also need to be stopped from joining any state government jobs. 12. To disrupt the studies of Bengali students studying in various educational institutes of Assam. 13. Buying from or selling to the Bengalis should be stopped. 14. Stop the screening of Bengali movies in local cinema halls. 15. The circulation of Calcutta-based newspapers should be stopped. 16. In Bengali-inhabited areas, industrial areas and Assam boundary areas, appoint Assamese officers. 17. Appointments of Bengalis in the railways, bank and insurance sectors should be stopped. 18. The Assamese should be appointed to all posts. 19. To disrupt the cultural and religious life of Bengalis in Assam. However, the old inhabitants should be allowed to live peacefully. 20. The locals should get business, job and other trading opportunities. The locals should get the work in mills and industries. 21. Everybody should wear “traditional dresses.”

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22. The sources of the resources like tea, coal, plywood, oil and other resources should be taken over by the Assam Government. 23. It should be communicated to Calcutta and Delhi that to live a decent life, the Assamese only needs salt from them. But without tea, coal and oil, they [Calcutta nd Delhi] cannot even survive. Assam should make them understand that the Assamese are not alone in the world.

24. The Assamese should make establish a cultural friendship with the Thai Buddhist.6

This document offers many more different tales of the Assam Movement’s strategies against its opposition than is within the scope of this chapter. But I want to draw attention to the blueprint of networked collective actions through which the spectacles of a mass movement came to be produced. Without a sense of this mediation, the spontaneity of the spectacles will remain uncomplicated. Bihu was seen as a natural home of such nationalist spectacles. The success of mobilizing an energized, networked mass depended on collapsing the boundary between a participatory audience and a guardian of the Bihu stage. If anything in the performance was perceived to be out of sync with the nationalist requirements (for instance, singing a Hindi song), the activists interrupted with provocative, emotional and acerbic comments and the possibility of disruptions turning into riots could keep the Bihu stage in line. However, in general, the strategy of the Movement aimed at appropriating the Bihu stage as its cultural platform.. Since communiques as the one cited above circulated secretly, rumours, contradictory information and ambiguity were operative imperatives. Approved lists of performers were never officially released. But they certainly existed, and many alleged willful manoeuvring of these lists by local activists, based more on contingent interpersonal equations than on grand ideological faultlines. Names of particular individuals could be added to or removed from these lists to settle other scores. An 6

In Appendix 3, Diganta Sharma, 1983r Asomt Nipirito Bangali (Jorhat: Ekalabya Prakashan, 2015), 62-63.

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important artist of his time, Charu Gohain, stressed this point in his 10 April 1982 letter to the editor of Dainik Asam, the foremost champion of the Movement at that time. Frustrated and angry by the apparent interdiction against him to perform on the Bihu stage that year, he wrote, I want to share certain things on the issues of banning certain anti-Assam Movement artists from this year’s Bihu stage. Among the banned artists, I heard that my name has also been willfully included by someone. From the very initial days of the Movement, I have been supporting it. I have been performing in the cultural programmes to hail the martyrs of the movement. Thus, I am deeply saddened by the rumours that I am involved with the Leftist political activities. I always refrain from any political activity. I also want to ask those people who have banned me, why do they not say anything against the performance of Hindi songs on the Bihu stage. Instead of putting a black stain on an individual’s reputation, they should be protesting against such anti-Assamese cultural practices. That would help the Assamese nation.7

It is important to note that the six years of the Assam Movement (1979-85) witnessed an unprecedented increase in the observation of Bihu on proscenium stages. A Bihu Sanmilani was being held in almost every suburb.8 The animosity between camps grew high. Rumors of a possible boycott was a source of constant upheaval, anxiety and tension.9 On the whole, it is actually remarkable how well the strategy worked, at least in the early phases of the Movement. In encouraging populist vigilantism, loosely held together by a set of well-known but officially undeclared techniques, the Movement could make Bihu a literal theatre of performing allegiance. However, although effective and successful in many ways, the strategy was also always punctuated by local material

Charu Gohain, “Letter to editor,” Dainik Asom, (Guwahati, Assam), April 10, 1982: 4. Interview with Jaykanta Gondhiya, 6.12.2017, 7pm to 8pm, Guwahati. 9 Interview with Dinesh Chandra Bora, 5.5.2016, 12 to 3PM, Lanka. 7 8

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and affective conditions. In the final years of the Movement, this question became increasingly visible in many instances. In a letter published in Dainik Asam on 7 June 1985, the President of the Madhya Guwahati All Assam Student Union openly accused Dipak Sangha, a local club based in Silpukhuri, Guwahati, of having felicitated an individual who was supposed to be banned from every public gathering. Reiterating nationalism’s claim on the popular, he declared that “enforcing the ban on an individual is not only the responsibility of the AASU office bearers. It is also the duty and the responsibility of the people.” He regretted the fact that even after five years of the movement, the raij had not learned to distinguish between the friends and the enemies of the people. “Does [only] the AASU need to identify the people who are banned and who are not? Does not the raij have any responsibility? There will be strict action against the individuals who have conspired to felicitate that banned individual.”10 The same newspaper carried a response from one Uttam Barua on the same day which, however, indicated the difficulties involved. I think that the word ‘public felicitation’ is used here incorrectly. I was there in the meeting. One retired artist of the Radio was felicitated. If the Guwahati AASU thinks that inviting a guest and the traditional practice of giving a gamucha to a veteran cultural organizer are the same, then I have nothing to say.…The person has two cinema halls in town. Can the AASU restrict people from watching movies in these two particular cinema halls? If they can, why have not they done it yet? What is the meaning of a ban? On the other hand, people knew that the individual in question had been associated with the said organization from the very initial stages. Along with some others, he is also one of the important sponsors of the club. It is also pertinent to ask why AASU did not raise an objection when he gave a talk for half an hour in another Bohagi Biday festival organized by another group? There was no problem when he was giving half-an-hour talk, but

10

“Borjon Prasanga, Letter 1,” Daink Asom, June 7, 1985: 4.

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when he was present in a function organized by his own club then AASU has a problem with that.11

The local calculations did not squarely add up to the abstractions of the social. In particular, the wealthy neighbours’ goodwill and influence shaped up the local networks of loyalty in ways that could confound and confront the AASU leadership. Sustaining the Movement on the ground required money, and the local-level organizers, even when they were united in their ideological opposition to “outsiders” and “traitors”, could not practically overlook the concrete facts and possibilities of patronage. This was indeed a fundamental structural limitation of the populist mobilization, and we will have more to say about this critical issue in the context of the nineteen nineties. For the moment, let us concentrate on the entwining of spectacularity and disciplinarity in the early phase of the Assam Movement. On the occasion of Bohag Bihu in 1982, the AASU in its official statement clearly stated that “if we cannot push back thousands of immigrants from Assam, all our national festivals and culture will melt away in the future.”Establishing the significance of Bihu in the larger context of the struggle, the statement read, “If we lose faith for once in the ongoing movement, these Bihu stages, the symbol of our national culture, will be taken over by the immigrants and we will lose our specific identity.”12 Dainik Asam printed a screaming headline in its front page: “Asome Notun Sankolpore Rongali Bihu Adorile” (“Assam Welcomes Bihu with a New Resolution”). The write-up interestingly cited Jyotiprasad Agarwala’s famous linking of the gamucha, by now the established symbol of Assamese sociality, with the blood of the nation’s subjects. Long back Jyotiprasad had sung, “The gamucha that is given by my mother, with it I will clean my blood of the bullet wound, I light the lamp before the god of war.” The people are being urged to celebrate our cultural symbol the Bihu, by

11 12

“Borjan Prasanga, Letter 2,” Daink Asom, June 7, 1985: 4. Emphasis added. Dainik Asom, April 5,1982: 1.

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hoisting the Bihu flag. Despite the obstruction of the weather, from Wednesday onwards people are gathered in the Bihu tolis in large scale. This year the Bihu stages bear much significance. Observing the tradition of Bihu and taking oath to ensure the existence of the Assamese nation still the people of Assam are anxious about the status of Assam and Assamese in the future? 13

In 1983, when more than 700 supporters of the Movement fell to the bullets of the security forces and in other communal skirmishes, the significance of Bihu took another turn. The Movement found its martyrs, and the Bihu stages now became the most important sites for celebrating their memory. A news report, titled “Bihu toilt Swahid Bedir Aahvan” (“Call to Build Martyrs’ Memorials on the Bihu Stage”), was published in Dainik Asam on 5 April 1982, which quoted a press statement of Kamal Nayak, the General Secretary of All Assam Kendriya Ardha-Kendriya Karmachari Parishad. Nayak specifically urged all the Bihu Sanmilanis of Assam to pay homage to the martyrs of “the struggle for defending the existence of Assam” by installing a Martyrs’ Memorial with the names of the deceased near each Bihu stage and in front of the main gate of each Bihu Sanmilani. The statement expressed hope that via these Martyrs’ Memorials, the national consciousness will “spread through the hearts of the thousands gathered in there.”14 The national consciousness spread less through stones than through rhymes, jokes, songs and slogans. Some of the new Bihu couplets popular in this period reflected a heightened sensibility against the “outsiders.” Arguably, the most notorious Bihu couplet of from this period is this one, the xenophobia of which was not owned up by the official representatives of the Movement: Muslims, tea tribes and Bengali The flat nose Nepali

13 14

“Asome Notun Sankalpore Rongali Bihu Adorile,” Dainik Asom, April 17, 1982: 1. “Bihu Toilt Swahid Bedir Aahvan,” Daink Asom, April 5, 1982: 1.

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Where have you come from, the son of a bitch?15

It is difficult to trivialize this as a casual instance of friendly banter, particularly when we consider the looming shadow of impending mass violence over the laughter that it might have caused. Meanwhile, more organized efforts were made to make a public spectacle out of Bihu by establishing centrally coordinated contact between different Bihu committees. On the first day of Bohag in 1982, AASU issued a call to organize a cultural procession, which was meant to be both an entertaining display of the unity and diversity of the Assamese nation as well as a show of its numerical might. All the Bihu committees of the Greater Guwahati area were mobilized and this served as a model for the other towns of Assam. Dainik Asam reported on 9 April 1982 that A statement of All Guwahati Student Union says that on 7 April 1982, a meeting was held in their office with the representative of various Bihu committees of Guwahati where it was decided that under the All Guwahati AASU a cultural rally will be organized in Guwahati town. The rally will visit the main roads of Guwahati while performing various folk cultures of Northeast India. After the flag hoisting and tribute to the martyrs in the various Bihu tolis of Guwahati, the people would gather in Judge’s Field and from there the rally would march through the main roads of Guwahati. It has also invited artists and writers to join the rally. The organizers also talked to the ‘Brihotor Guwahati Luko-Sanskiritk Samanyrakhi Santha’ and requested the Bihu groups under it to join [the rally].16

In another resolution, responding to the call of the Assam Sahitya Sabha organizing committee, the same meeting also urged the various Bihu committees of Guwahati to provide financial assistance to the Sahitya Sabha’s Diphu session. As far as I can track, this seems to have been the first formal attempt at appropriating Bihu within the fold of the Movement. Homen Borgohain was not happy with it. Obviously, in his clear

15 16

Interview with Dinesh Chandra Bora, 5.5.2016, 12 pm to 3pm, Lanka. “Guwahatit Sanskritik Subhajatrar Babe Ahban,” Dainik Asom, April 9, 1982: 1.

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distinction between pristine culture and ugly politics, attempts such as this were outrageous. Criticizing the political arithmetic behind the procession, he wrote, Undoubtedly, this year Bihu is being connected with politics and by doing this they have started to destroy Bihu. On the first day of Bohag a grand cultural rally was organized in Guwahati under the leadership of AASU and Gana Sangram Parishad. The rally was led by Dr Bhupen Hazarika and Hiranya Kumar Bhattachrya. The rally ended at Judge’s Field and both spoke on the occasion. The third speaker of the day was Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, the president of AASU. Naturally, the topic of the talk was not Bihu but Assam’s problem with foreigners.”17

On the other end of the spectrum, for Kirtinath Hazarika, one of the leading supporters of the Assam Movement and the editor of Dainik Asam, this was a symbol of the Assamese nation’s solidarity against the political insolence of the Indian state. Welcoming the Bihu rally, in one of his editorials, published on 18 April 1982, Hazarika drew attention to the ways in which the Assamese national symbols were creatively deployed in the rally, and how the performance of dhul-Pepa, Bihu-Nama and Borgit symbolized the rich cultural heritage of the Assamese. Twisting a folk proverb that said the happiest day for a grandmother is the wedding day of her grandchild, the editorial mentioned that a sixty-year-old woman also participated and danced in the rally since “they are leading this big movement, while making the Martyrs’ Memorials in Bihu tolis for their friends who have sacrificed their lives for the nation; how can a grandmother keep herself at home for a simple problem like a back pain.” Applauding the different cultural troupes that joined the rally, Hazarika wrote, “Not only did the indigenous groups like Karbis, Morans, Mishings, and Bodos join the rally, the Jhumur groups from the tea gardens, the cultural troupes from different states like Manipur, Tamil Nadu,

17

Borgohain, Asir Dasakar, 21-22.

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Rajasthan also joined and shared our celebration of Bihu. Only the people who have no eyes to see will call us separatist.”18 Of course, such official celebration of the inclusiveness of Assamese nationalism and its pan-Indian appeal was strategically emphasized in order to undermine the growing criticism of the Movement as exclusionary and even separatist. But more interesting for us is the unmistakable correspondence between the spectacles of cultural processions and the structure of riots. For instance, the musical instruments like dhol, doba, etc were not simply the revered cultural symbols of the Assamese nation, but also extensively used in different riots as a cue for violent collective actions, mass gatherings, dissemination of information, etc. When the Movement officially asked its volunteers to sabotage the election campaigns of 1983, a secret document was circulated which categorically stressed the use of the dhol for making public announcements. In the section on public communication, the second instruction stated, ‘In the village areas the publicity should be abrupt and should be done with the rhythm of dhol.’ The next instruction clarified that ‘in case of any emergency, the announcement should be made even entering in the cinema halls. After the beatingof dhol the announcement should be made.”19 Straddling the sacred and the profane, the musical instruments of Bihu performances doubled as weapons of the masculine might of the Assamese nation. An investigative reportage in 2015 emphasized this connection between the Assam Movement’s calibration of violence and the rhythm of the doba, the revered Vaisnavite musical instrument: The ‘rhythm of doba’ was the cue for the Assamese to come out with spears and arrows in hand. That cue was the signal to get ready for rioting. The day was the 18th of February of 1983. The attack was launched in eight villages of neighbouring Goreshwar town of Kamrup district … Remembering that fateful “Bihu Sera,” Dainik Asom, April 18, 1982. Appendix-2, “Sewsasevak Bahinir Gupon Circular –Nirbason Pratirodh Karjya Babstha,” Diganta Sharma, 1983r Asomt Nipirito Bangali (Jorhat: Ekalabya Prakashan, 2015), 61. 18 19

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day, Pankaj Biswas of Hazalapara village said, ‘…the rhythms of the doba of the temples in the evening often remind us of that fateful day. Because on that day, the attackers gathered and marched to the rhythms of doba…basically on the 17th, the day before the attack, on the cue of the nagara rhythms they had congregated in Rampur (Gohainhaouli) village…’20

The construction of the dhol as the masculine insignia of the Assamese nation was not a simple, unilinear process. It was shaped by the simultaneous and contradictory pulls of violence and vivacity, death and life. The rhythms of a dhol frightened “the enemies.” But they were also widely perceived as a life-giving force, as a call to sociality that could pull a damaged individual up from dreadful depression and reunite the person with the world. Moh Guwalor Bihu, a 2011 novel in Assamese, takes pain to make this point. The protagonist of the novel, a water buffalo herder, had decided to commit suicide after a broken love affair. In the wee hours of the night, slipping away quietly from his concerned colleagues, he made for a nearby waterbody to plunge himself to death. But on his way he heard the playing of the dhol in the distance, The rhythm of the dhol cast a spell over him … He forgot that he was about to embark on a journey to kill himself. He forgot that he was to jump into the deepest depth of the nearby lake … But the captivating rhythm of the dhol made him forget everything. He suddenly decided he would become a dhuliya. In the middle of the night he would play the dhol. In the silence of the darkest night through the playing of dhol, he would speak his mind. It was alright if it did not reach anyone’s ear. He would become a dhuliya.21 I contend that in order to understand the relationship of Bihu with the populist nationalism of the Assam Movement, a simple narrative of instrumentalization will prove grossly inadequate. As Ernesto Laclau perceptively points out, “there is no populism without affective investment in partial objects.”22 In Laclau’s description, 20

Sharma, 1983r, 42. Anil Phookan, Moh Guwalor Bihu (Guwhati: Bristhti, 2011), 76. 22 Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (London and New York: Verso, 2005), 116. 21

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symbols are “partial objects” par excellence “that, through their very partiality embody an always receding totality” or fullness of the nation.23 The affective investment in the Bihu symbols like gamucha or dhol bestrode the repertoires of death, life and memory in a complex and uneven manner. This was why within the narrative framework of the Assam Movement the grimmest stories of xenophobia, intimidation and targeted violence could be overwritten with romantic, tragic-heroic and sentimental tales. In responding to the growing violence, riots and subsequent police atrocities in 1983, the writer and poet Nirmalprabha Bordoloi wrote, Rongali Bihu is a festival of merriment, a festival of New Year celebration, a festival to become close with the nature, a festival to make a vow for the future. It is not a time of celebration. Since Bihu is the festival of unity and fraternity, we should stand united, hand in hand, beneath the Bihu flag. Like 1980, when we stood below the Bihu flag wishing for justice, wishing for the honour of our motherland with peaceful means, through our constitution and for our existence we have taken the resolution, we should not forget that pure resolution … the sky has been slowly blackened by the clouds, the storm is coming … but that does not mean that we will be numbed. Relating to the present situation, remembering the lost bravery of the past days, we will have to regroup ourselves to the rhythm of the dhol. A nation that is still living with strength should be known through its folk performances, through our own sartorial traditions, with boat races and other performances. By giving our heartfelt respect to the martyrs, we will have to sing, recite poetry in the Bihu tolis…the martyrs who gave their today for our tomorrow, isn’t it our duty to help those martyrs’ families living in destitution? A living nation takes all the responsibility in all walks of things. Without giving new clothes to the family of the martyrs we cannot get [new clothes] for ourselves. Our conscience does not allow us to do so.24

23 24

Laclau, Populist, 116-7. Nirmal Prabha Bordoloi, “Bihu Palahi,” Dainik Asom, April 2, 1983: 4. Emphasis added

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In this rendition, Bihu was not only a site of celebration and commemoration, but also an occasion to renew the community. Asking the community to offer social and financial help to the martyrs’ families and wounded individuals became a regular feature of the Bihu appeals. As the government sponsorships of Bihu programmes were stopped, several attempts were made to create collective funds by organizing large donation campaigns.. Programmes like “community begging” and “community bank” started in this period as a response to the capital crisis, and particularly to fight against the lack of government sponsorships and their unresponsive, harsh attitude against the Assam Movement. The Diphu session of the Asam Sahitya Sabha was about to commence and a cornered state government did its best to undermine the session. Since the 1920s, the Sahitya Sabha had come to rely on the government sponsorship for running its sessions. But as the Sabha revealed itself to be one of the important constituents of the Assam Movement leadership, the administration which was under the President’s Rule from 19 March 1982 to 27 February 1983, refused patronage and threw other obstacles in its path. An angry Nirlmalprabha Bordoloi wrote on 11 April 1982: Many groups were conspiring to ensure that the Asam Sahitya Sabha’s Diphu session could not be held. The Government of Assam has stopped its contribution, denied casual leave to its employees, and withheld permission to use the schools, colleges, and other premises in Diphu. But the question is: At whom is the government directing this hostility? The Sahitya Sabha has become an enemy in the eyes of the government just because it stood by a constitutional truth. Without the existence of Assam, will there be any existence of the Asam Sahitya Sabha? How could it be a democratic government, when it could not understand the soul of its people? The political conspiracy of the last two decades has dismantled the land of Assam like the folk heroine Tezimala. Now,

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the time has come when the speared head of the Tezimala is being thrashed with lathi and bullet!25

This was when the Bihu committees came to be viewed as a possible alternative. The committees were urged to support the Sahitya Sabha session. An editorial published in Dainik Asam on 19 April 1982 hailed this as a perfect example of “how the indigenous people are being inspired to work, for it speaks volumes of the golden future of the Assamese nation.” It claimed, “The Assamese people will show the government that without their sponsorship and other assistance, the session of the Assam Sahitya sabha will be held. By now, a substantial amount of money has been collected. The Assamese people will show the world again.”26 This strand of thinking and organizing grew out of the Assam Movement in the particularly difficult years of the early 1980s. But the programme of an economic nationalism persisted and developed in the next decade as the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) emphatically consolidated its grip over the regional politics.

Donation, Hindi Imperialism and Bihu: The ULFA Years

An article titled “ULFA’s Appeal on the Occasion of Bohag Bihu” was published on 2 April 1990 in a popular pro-Assam Movement daily newspaper. Issued by Sonitpur District Committee of the organization, the statement appealed to the Bihu function committees to organize the Bihu conventions strictly on the donation of the “Assamese people.” It also stressed that except the special cultural evening, all the other Bihu programmes, particularly different Bihu competitions, should be organized in open

Tezimala was a popular Assamese fictional character, who was killed by her step mother. “The step motherly treatment of Delhi” was a popular discourse of 1990s. Nirmal Prabha Bordoloi, “Asom Sahitya Sabha Aru Bihu Prasanga,” Daink Asom, April 11, 1982: 4. 26 Dainik Asom, April 19, 1982: 4. 25

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fields. Rather than inviting “expensive artists,” the statement stressed on encouraging local talents both as a measure to curtail the excessive expenditure and grooming the local artistes.27 But the statement came out a little too late. In most places, at least in most of the major towns, the Bihu preparations were well underway. Finally, Siddhartha Phukan, then the head of the publicity department of ULFA, issued a revized version by rephrasing the district committee’s earlier diktat. Instead of an outright refusal of the proscenium stages, he recognized Bihu to be “the changing image of Assamese social life,” and thus accepted the proscenium as a symbol of contemporary social dynamics.28 However, underlining the issue of the supposed deterioration of Bihu ethics in recent times, Phukan argued that the proscenium must acknowledge its share of the blame. He claimed that the “superficial staging of modern, irritating noise of bad culture (apasanskriti)” was unable to register the real relationship between Bihu and nature. The only way out was a substantial revision of the programme structure of Bihu stage performances. Instead of the superficial performance on “Bollywood music,” Phukan made a case for equal representation of folk cultures of different indigenous communities. Stressing ULFA’s theoretical understanding of the non-indigenous communities as the dominant oppressors of the local people, he declared that the nonindigenous communities should get a chance to be involved in Bihu and thus contribute to Assamese culture, but the “commercial attitude” of giving the “capitalist oppressors the portfolio of patrons” in the ranks of the organizing committee or providing them “front row seats etc” on the programme days should be stopped.29 Instead of collecting huge contributions just to invite an industry star, he urged the Bihu organizers to focus on the artists of the respective localities. Phukan also urged them to stop practices like

“Bihu upolokhya Ulfar ahban,” Dainik Asom, April 2,1990: 1. “Bihu Samparkat Pracharit Paktaba Samparkat Ulfa,” Danik Asom, April 21, 1990: 1. 29 “Bihu Samparkat,” Daink Asom, 1. 27 28

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collecting contribution by stopping random vehicles on the roads or extorting collections from the small shop-owners in the market and other public places.30 This candid articulation of ULFA’s understandings of Bihu as it came to be organized by the end of the the 1980s, is usually pitted as a somewhat new shift in the “cultural” appraisal of the Assamese national narrative.31 But the larger issue that is amiss in this kind of argument was the assumption that the impure, corrupting prominence of capital had actually destabilized the desired goal of the nation. The figures of a Marwari man with an inflated belly, distributing fruits during the strikes of the Assam Movement was, at this point, constantly invoked as a metaphor of how the nonindigenous trading communities distracted the Movement from its original goal.32 They were being made responsible for changing the movement’s goal from bohiragoto (outsiders) to bidexhi (foreigners). In 1990s when the question of sovereignty of Assam was discussed in terms of oppressive Indian state, a new discourse emerged that Assam movement was initially against the outsiders, but by corrupting the AASU leadership, to maintain their self interest, these trading communities shifted it to a more ambiguous issue. If it would have been otherwise, the movement would have been far more focused on real, material issues.33 Dipti Mudoi, the central publicity secretary of Asom Swatantra Bahini, another ULFA-like organization that sprang up at this point, wrote, One particular language group for the maintainace of their imperial interest in Assam has organized a chauvinist Hindi Ultra nationalism in Assam. With the help of bad culture[the Hindi movies, music etc] they have been trying to corrupt the Assamese culture. Using this expanism attitude they wanted to replace the Assamese culture with their Hindi belt culture.34

“Bihu samparkat,” Daink Asom, 6. Interview with Lachit Bardoloi, 5.1.2014, 10PM to 12 PM, Guwahati. 32 Interview with Jiban Chandra Tamuli Phukan, 5.5.2016, 7 PM to 9PM, Lanka . 33 Interview with Jiban Chandra Tamuli Phukan, 5.5.2016, 7 PM to 9PM, Lanka. 34 Dipti Mudoi, “Asomr bartman paristhiti,” Sadin, 16 Febauary, 1990. 30 31

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ULFA’s own idea of “non-indigenous community” was ambiguous; in a politically correct version, they tried to make a distinction between the working class Hindispeaker and the Hindi-speaking business community. Published in one of the important vernacular weeklies in the 1990s, ‘Sadin,’ Sidhartha Phukan wrote: A particular class who works as the local agents of Indian imperialism has been getting active in the last couple of months. To subsume their imperial, class agendas, this reactionary force is trying to use the indigenous local “Hindispeakers,” to expand the base of Hindi imperialism in Assam.35

Distinguishing a certain imperial ideology and Hindi speakers, he stressed that “ULFA is against the Hindi imperial agenda; though we are not against any particular community…” In the same statement, Phukan conferred a somewhat indigenous status to the local Hindi-speaking working class as ‘pre-Hindi speaker” community and claimed that these reactionary imperial agents had begun using them in the name of Hindi nationalism. To describe it very clearly, the “pre-Hindi” speaker means the working-class outsiders, who, at least, what Phukan articulated, had already abandoned their old language and now through their interaction with local Assamese people adopted the Assamese language as their everyday language. Phukan claimed that it was not the Assamese community that exploiting this working-class group but as an agent of capitalism, these “Hindi speakers,” has always been exploited by them. But now after ascendance of ULFA, since their “class agendas are under threat, they are trying to create an alliance with the working class of the ‘pre-Hindi speaker community.”36 Of course, this discourse of “anti-commercialization” had produced a new affinity in terms of the Bihu stage. Though both the ULFA appeals had not explicitly argued for any banning of competitions on the Bihu stage as such, probably taking a cue from the

35 36

“Hindi Sampasaran Badar Birudha Ulfa,” Sadin, January 19, 1990. “Hindi Samprasaranbadr Birudha ULFA,” Sadin, 26 January, 1990.

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discourses, one Nani Barua from Guwahati opposed the proposal of “ending the competition of Bihu dance.” “Without that,” he argued, “the environment for learning would be lost and instead the young generation will become inclined towards western songs and dances.” However, agreeing to the discourse of supposed commercialization of Bihu, he argued that “judges should be advized to confer the prizes only to the real Bihu dances.” “For the benefit of participants and judges,” he argued, “a guide book on Bihu dance, songs, and sartorial and instrumental arrangements should be made.” Agreeing with many, he also argued for replacement of words like “Bihu kuwari (princess), Bihu kuwar (prince), samragi (empresses) etc.,”— “words that symbolize the commercialization aspect of Bihu”— with words like bihuwati, bor bihuwati, bor bihuwa etc. Rejecting the so-called “commercial” titles, a more original, non-hierarchical, somewhat democratic production of Bihu stage was sought.37 Jatin Borgohain, one of the important voices of the self-determination discourse in Assam, had a different idea on the supposed economic sovereignty of Assam. Narrating the gap between raw materials and the lack of entrepreneurship among the Assamese, he tried to describe an intricate detail picture of the Assamese peasant’s every day. With the help of an imaginary protagonist called Konbapu, Borgohain surveyed his relation with his resources and his destitution. Konbapu is from Huj village. He had ripped borthekera from the huge tree that is on the periphery of his four bigha property. Today is Bihu, so he wants to sell them in the neighbouring market. Near the scattered, not-yet-mature bamboo trees, the borthekera tree has come up by its own. Konbapu has not done anything in the land. There are some betel nut trees growing for many years. A big jackfruit tree, two mango trees, a grapefruit tree, and along with some nonproductive trees are there on the premises. Beside his thatched hut, there is a small cage for six ducks. He also has five goats with five kids. Two poorly-fed

37

Nani Barua, Daink Asom, April 9, 1990.

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cows with two calves along with one female calf, and two grown-up oxen. His family consisted of five members. Konbapu has to work as a daily wage earner at least three months of the year. Besides these four bighas of homestead land, he has six bighas of paddy land. The paddy production is good in the summer, but he does not do anything in the winter. Konbapu’s condition is the general condition of the Assamese poor peasants. He does not know where the yarns have come from that used for the bihuwan for bohag Bihu, or the raw cloth that was fabricated later or what the colour for the yarns was made from. He knows from which wood the Bihu dhol is made, the leather for the dhol or for the strings of the dhol. But he does not have the technical expertise for that. He cannot even make a straight plough…This is the situation of not only Konbapu, it is the general condition of the spineless, dependent, futureless Assamese nationality.38

The gap between technical expertise and the abundance of raw materials needed to be linked up, Borgohain argued. Invoking the tradition of celebration of three Bihus in a year, he described how these acts of “feasting” were dependent entirely on the mercy of mainland India. He pointed out the sources of the ingredients of the bihu feast — “the rou fish comes from Andhra Pradesh or Bihar,” “dal and potatoes come from Utter Pradesh.”, and “good quality rice from Punjab and Haryana” (p-18). “With this everdependent mindset,” he chuckled that the Assamese nation ironically celebrated the deeds of its heroes “like Sukafa, Lachit, Mulagavaru, Sri Sri Sankaradeva in our everyday existence and we dream of another Saraighat.”39 Not only were the Bihu “feasts” dependent on the mercy of the mainland states, the lack of technical expertise and its obvious corollary, the laziness of the Assamese subjects, was also eating away at the core of Bihu. Due to their habituated dependence the revered attire of Bihu performances, the musical instruments of Bihu, all were 38 39

Jatindra Kumar Borgohain, Myung-Dun-Chun-Kham,(Sibsagar: Udayan Prakashan,1993), 18. Borgohain, Myung, 19.

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slowly falling into the hands of the outsiders. For instance, Borgohain stated, because of the lack of technical knowhow and the government’s lack of vision, the Assam market was flooded with bihuwan or gamosa from Madras. He claimed that “there will be a day when not just the bihuwan, the tongali (waistcloth) will also come from either Madras or Hyderabad.” The same went for musical instruments like dhol, tal, pepa, and gogona. We have enough woods to make the dhol, but we do not know the technology to produce it. We perform the tal, we celebrate the tradition of the bhur tal. But do we know from where have these come from? How many people know the technology to construct the pepa, made from the horn of water buffalo? Let’s not talk about the gogona. If we think that these musical instruments are the main instruments of our national tradition, then whose responsibility it is to focus on its production? 40

Borgohain’s argument was straightforward. The sovereignty of the Assamese depended on the economic sovereignty of their nation. Without a control over the material means of production, all claims of autonomy in the cultural life of the nation were hollow. If the Assamese were serious about their ritual, sartorial, musical and other cultural inheritances, they must try and wrest the political control of the material conditions of culture from the hands of the oppressors, in this case the Indian state. This homespun concoction of nationalism and Marxism came to define the theoretical terrain of the post-Assam Movement Assamese nationalism of the 1990s, even beyond the ULFA’s organizational confines. Writing on the destitute status of the traditional craftsmen, in an appeal to the government, one Ananta Narayan Borthakur wrote in Dainik Asam on 14 April 1990, Because of the price-hike in leather this traditional craft [of dhol-making] has been facing a lot of problems. Moreover, since the wooden core of the dhol is produced without any modern machine, the artis has to devote considerable time

40

Borgohain, Myung, 20.

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and physical energy. The lack of modern instruments, no sources for capital investments and its seasonal importance have made the poor, illiterate artists depressed. Therefore, being mainly agriculture-dependent, these artists have slowly giving up this important craft. Now the non-Assamese businessmen of different towns have seized this opportunity of making dhol and khul, which eventually transferred this local craft to the non-Assamese and constituted an obstacle in the livelihood opportunities of the poor indigenous craftsmen.41

THE NOVELIZED ETHNOGRAPHY

However, the problem is not just about the invasion of “outsiders” in a local craft, the interrelationship is much more complex. Anil Phookan’s’s novel, though from a recent time, has developed the ethnographic intricacies of the fables and legends of dhulmaking and the present-day destitution of local dhol craftsmen. As it happens, suicidal Gandhala from earlier, after that small episode of depression, has vowed to become a dhuliya. He found a frail-looking but commendable expert guru in his neighborhood in no time. The expert sent him to get a proper dhol from a neighborhood dhol maker. The family tradition of that maker was so legendary that one of their ancestors was mentioned in a Bihu geet. Someone told him that the legendary mushiyar who was mentioned in the Bihu geet was so perfect a maker of dhol that the rhythm and sounds of that dhol resonate with the dhol of Kailash that was brought down by Partha, the second Pandava of the Mahabharata. It was claimed that the dhol just needed to be played by a layman; and would on its own generate beautiful rhythms. Such legendary efficacy invoked a contrasting scene when Gandhela reached the place of the maker. He realized that the place was seemingly shrouded in destitution, 41

Ananta Narayan Borthakur, Dainik Asom, April 14, 1994: 4.

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slumped with abandonment. Memera Mushiyar, the maker was astonished. He asked with a wonder, ‘Why have you come here when there are abundant dhols in the town shop. Nobody comes here for dhols. You are the first customer this year. Nowadays, I do not make dhols. I do not have money to buy even la, hengul, and haital. And I will make dhols!” But when Gandhala insisted that he should not abandon this age-old, ancestral profession, he replied how it was impossible to carry forward, since for the core structure of the dhol, one needs the trunk of a mango, sam, or jackfruit tree is required, which is not free. “Nowadays” he lamented, “From dima to firinga you are entirely dependent on others. Earlier just enter a jungle and cut whatever tree you need. Now you cannot even cut a small branch. The owner has eyes on everything. He would demand money.”42

Despite the destitution and feeling of giving up, Memera finally decided to make five dhols for Gandhala. When he was selecting the core of the dhols, he told him some of the intricate details of dhol making. “I will make your dhol from this core. The hollow of the core is wide and the surface breadth is thin. Do you know, since the core of the dhol is hollow and the inside consisted of darkness, the dhol is also called dhundkoliya or dhonkolia.” Relating the intricate detail of the dhol making, he said, the leather ropes are good when they are from the back skin of an ox. From the skin of a cow the dhol is made. Many dhuliyas would suggest that you make the dhol from the short skin of a spirited ox. But how could you assert that the ox was spirited or not when you found it after it was dead? There is another legend. The skin of a baby calf that was killed by a tiger is good for dhol.43

Of course, such intricate detailing of dhol making, ethnographic factuality actually produced an epistemological difference between local craftsmanship with the marketoriented “outsiders.” In an interview, cultural activist Jaykanata Gandhiya, stressed the

42 43

Phookan, Moh Guwalor, 74. Phookan, Moh Guwalor, 82.

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fact that the making of a good dhol depends on the subtle arts of making the hollow (khuloni), of placing the drum skins (saouni), and finally of knotting the leather ropes.44 In the 1990s, these difference of dhol making techniques was invoked as a discourse against the outsiders, particularly the Bengali musical instrument makers. In another interview, Joydeep Baruah, a social scientist and a dhuliya, explained how his dhol instructor used to become angry about the dhul-making craftsmanship of the nonAssamese makers in the 1990s.45 One of the major criticisms of the practitioners concerned the specific difference between the knot of a dhol and a dhulki or a tabla.46Allegedly, the “non-Assamese” craftsmen had adopted the dhulki or tabla method of knotting, since they were unfamiliar with the traditional method of making an Assamese dhol. This technical difference greatly affected the production of sound and resonance, which was much more than a mere technical detail for the practitioners. However, in the last decade or so, owing to an increased demand and heightened sensitivity around the issue, the production of dhol is reported to be growing. In many cases, the local craftsmen have gained prominence and a number of villages have begun to specialize in the profession. However, Gandhiya was not very optimistic in the interview: I do not want to say this, because the workers are indigenious; entire villages or communities are now getting into it. But in the last nine or ten years the quality of the dhol has declined. The sound of the dhol has also declined. Earlier even in open spaces we played only two dhols and that was enough. Now even nine or ten dhols cannot produce that sound. Dhul-making was a very difficult and sincere job. Earlier, we used to visit a village uncle to request him to make a dhol

44

Interview with Jaykanta Gondhiya, 6.12.2017, 7pm to 8pm, Guwahati. Interview with Joydeep Baruah, 5.7.2017, Guwahati. 46 For Jaykanta Gondhiya, it is Tabla. The sides where hands are used for sounds is now semblance with the dhol sound. 45

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and it used to take a whole year. If you request him this year, you will get it next year.47

The lament about the acceleration of production and the consequent loss of quality obscures a larger point. A particular reification of the authenticity of local production seems to be the keystone of the new discursive regime. In acknowledging the economic impact of the regime on the growing market of local craftsmanship, Gandhiya also indicated how this increased spree of production has crucially drawn on and modified the techniques of the “outsiders” as a way to meet the growing demand. While more detailed work needs to be conducted to ascertain the extent and nature of the ongoing process of hybridization and transmission of these craft techniques, it can be safely stated that the factors at work are more complex and more mixed than the received vocabulary of local authenticity can contain.. Rather than the specific technologies of the making, the abstracted body of the local maker seems to authenticate the quality of the making. This detour to the contemporary helps us grasp a central paradox of the Assamese nationalism during the 1990s. The more a strict separation between the corrupting, monopolized market economy of outsiders and the idyllic, natural, self-sufficient world of the local indigenous population was insisted upon, the less correspondence it had with an evolving neoliberal reality. It was increasingly alleged that even the so-called soldiers of freedom were tempted by the seductive charm of industrially produced commodities and the dreams of a comfortable life. The most influential public intellectual of the time, Parag Kumar Das, repeatedly alluded to this problem in his celebrated novel on the ULFA, Sanglot Fenla (‘Revolution’s Army’). Responding to the many allegations of corruption, financial mismanagement, growing penchant for a comfortable life, the protagonist of the novel, Diganta chose to remember how he had

47

Interview with Jaykanta Gondhiya, 6.12.2017, 7pm to 8pm, Guwahati.

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tried to maintain the spirit of the revolutionary organization by inventing a new strategy for collecting donations. He recalled that before he came to Kachin, he was responsible of the finance department of the organization. He was opposed to collecting money from the people who have no sympathy for their struggle. So he started a system of collecting contributions from the well-wishers with coupons. He introduced the yearly coupon of five hundred, one hundred, fifty and twenty-five rupees. In the General Council, he argued that in this way the organization can collect ten million rupees a year, which was sufficient for an underground organisation. If the need arose, two or three bank robberies would do…. The General Council had duly accepted his proposal but the boys were ashamed of collecting fifty, twenty-five rupees coupons from the people. Collecting money from corrupted bureaucrats and businessmen at gunpoint was much easier and more exciting. Money is money, whether it is from the well-wishers or from some corrupted businessman that is the argument given by the new boys.48

But ULFA’s tactics were somewhat subtle, at least, in its official understanding. Responding to an accusation that in return for donations, ULFA had to help businessman in strengthening their empires, Siddhartha Phukan refusing such claims and reiterated that, “ ULFA is at war against this oppressive structure…the oppressors who made pleasure out of the coroers of half hungry people are our enemy, whether they are Assamese or non-indigenous. So whether it Fancy Bazar or Pan Bazar, any ‘big capital,’ we have nothing to gain from them...” Distinguishing between the so-called ‘non-violent’ organizations and ULFA, he declared that, “These oppressors give money to the so-called non-violent organizations in expectation of some kind of return but the money seized from them by ULFA is used in their destruction.” There is a return, a conceptual unity between organizing Bihu and organizing revolution. The politics of organizing Assamese national festivals on the basis of the donation of the non48

Parag Kumar Das, Sanglat Fenla (1993, Guwahati: Aalibaat, 2013), 16.

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indigenous people have become a general strategy for some time. Recently after the new BJP government coming to power, to alternate that relationship an attempt was made. However, the attempt was severely criticized with organized protest.49

THE ‘TRIBAL’ BIHU

“Have you ever seen an original Bihu? I suppose not. First, get an idea about the original Bihu. Then you can tell me about the politics of Bihu”, one of my interviewers snapped at me in Guwahati.50 Thus prodded, in April 2013, I embarked on a journey to the Barekuri area of Tinsukia district where I was told I could see the pristine, “original” Bihu. With the help of Pankaj a member of the All Assam Moran Students’ Union, I entered an area which was once famous as the main nursery for the ULFA’s recruits. Of course, the enduring traces of atrocities committed by the Indian security establishment were almost everywhere. But I was discussing something else. After a delicious dinner around eight in the evening with Pankaj and the person who offered us hospitality for the night, I went to watch the much-trumpeted Dharma Huchori, in a distant neighbourhood of the village. When we were tumbling through the villagers’ backyards or squeezing through gaps in the bamboo fences, my two companions were trying to educate me about the Dharma Huchori. Observed once in ten years (every three years in some villages), such was the majestic aura of the Dharma Huchori that both of them asked me not to take any photographs, citing the possibility of otherworldly punishments. Finally we entered a household and 49

https://scroll.in/article/848824/in-assam-an-attack-on-former-ulfa-militants-fuels-fresh-anti-bengali-rhetoric. Such strategies had a larger consequence in terms of constituting national capital in later years. ULFA’s general secretary, Anup Chetia, in an interview to me, described how the might of armed force helped in generating capital and space in investment in the areas where the so-called outsiders were dominating earlier and in that way a “national capital” has been generated. Interview with Anup Chetia, December 28, 2017, Guwahati, 7.30PM to 8PM. 50 Interview with Manash Rabin, 23.03.2013, 11pm to 12pm, Guwahati.

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found ourselves amidst a gathering of people. Along with them, we waited for some time for the Huchori group to arrive. Eventually, the group entered the front yard and started to perform. To my surprise, instead of any peculiar, rustic, or exotic performance, what I saw was a highly standardized production. Even the pada that followed the diha was unusual.they performed the Phul Konwar and Moni Konwar Malita, a retelling of an old mystic story usually ascribed to precolonial traditions. It was an alltoo-typical scene from some Bihu “expert’s” book. The dancing steps and poses were very sattriya. I must confess that I was a little disappointed to see my expectation of experiencing the “original” disappear into thin air! Next day, after making quite a few phone calls, we finally located an old, knowledgeable person who could tell us the “origin” of Dharma Huchori. Lofok Chetia was a ninety-year-old man and lived in the vicinity of Barekuri village. His vanishing gray hair and the two permanent stain lines of betel-nut juice just below the lower lips made him look elegantly ancient, and he eventually agreed to recount to me the history of the Dharma Huchori. He told me that long back the Morans were very rustic and primitive in the area. In the early twentieth century, probably around 1912, a neovaishnavite bhakat arrived from Bhati, the colloquial name for the colonial Lower Assam. He might have possibly been from Nagaon district, Chetia surmized. Being a history student, I pressed on the sources of his claim, but he told me that it was 1912 for sure. At any rate, Chetia said, in order to reform the rustic way of the people, the bhakat invented the Dharma Huchori. In the vicinity of the different Kala Samhati sattras, and particularly the growing interest in the figure and ideas of Sankaradeva in the nationalist circles around this time, I thought that this narrative may not be too far off the mark. Of course, such an explicit acknowledgment of the relatively recent origin of Dharma Huchori has found no mention in any other available narrative of the Moran community. Instead, connecting the practice with the hoary history of the kalasamhati satra and its founder Aniruddhadeva, the standard community histories usually push 224

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back the origin of Dharma Huchori to sixteenth century. Chetia, however, was more interested in criticizing the falling standards of today’s Dharma Huchori. He regretted that many undesirable, “modern” poses and dancing steps had been included in the current performances which were not there in the original Dharma Huchori. He suggested that I count the poses and the steps, and record it in writing so that the performance did not become corrupted any further. But such revered marking of the huchori and the community within it seemed contrasting, when I went to visit a Bihu khula or a ‘Bihu under the tree performance’ in Motapung village in the neighbourhood. It was a completely rustic affair, small girls who probably just attained puberty in last two-three years, were already married. Only the vermilion in their hair parting set them apart them from the giggling crowd of friends they were engrossed with. Pankaj asked, “Have you noticed, brother, how our girls are married so young!” With a DSLR camera that I borrowed from a friend, I looked like an outsider and many in the crowd thought I was from some Guwahatibased satellite TV channel. “Where have you come from? Newslive, DY365?” some enquired. It was a thrilling affair. A bamboo separated the crowd from the young girls or the Bihu nachonis. Making a rhythmic sound on the bamboo with a stick the young men tried to sing songs and the girls responded to it with dancing and counter-singing. After the performance, Pankaj asked me to meet some of the elders of the village present there. In our conversation, they said it was an age-old tradition of the Moran community and they were there to ensure that it should be done in a very controlled environment. But as we were coming back, I realized the dating of the Bihu toli was not over yet. Amongst all the homebound groups of young women, there was a biker, delicately balancing his about-to-collapse motorcycle, having a conversation with the girl as he rode slowly alongside her. Just ahead of me, I could hear him urging her , ‘uth, uth’(sit, sit on my bike). The girl was indecisive. After a point, probably showing a show of irritation the biker left, accelerating away and revving it like a racer. But he 225

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stopped again some distance ahead and confronted the girl again. He insisted again, “uth uth.” This time the girl finally decided and they rode away, leaving her giggling friends behind. I enquired of Pankaj, “Has she really left with him?” He replied probably with an envious tone, “Yes, indeed!” My friend Pankaj was a young guy, he too indulged in this roadside dating. He eventually liked a girl and started talking to her. I was sitting behind him, and was admittedly a bit scandalized. We followed her till her home. We met her mother and Pankaj insisted that I was from Guwahati and interviewing people about the Moran Bihu, so we came to her place too. Since Pankaj’s main focus was the girl, the conversation went along that line. We discussed about the Bihu Khula, tradition and about the practice of elopement. I found she was very calm, somewhat fascinated by the practice of elopement and even giving some agency to the young girls she said somewhat fondly, “they would become very furious if we do not allow them to go to the Bihu Khula.” I thought she might be stressing the importance of a community affair where parents would just surrender to the spectacular of the exotic. It is difficult to ascertain in a cause and effect relationship the endorsement of the practice of elopement and the celebration of Bihu Khula performance, along with Dharma huchari by the same community. The internal tension, particularly when Pankaj told me that it was that dharama huchori or other vasnavite rituals that restricted the community to get reservation in the six scheduled list. My own observation is certain kind of official endorsement towards elopement was part of the larger strategy, tactics to flag out it’s so called ‘primitive traits.’ In fact, the community in a relatively recent time started the Moaran community official Bihu called Rati Bihu which is slightly outside of the vasnavite practices. We will come to this point later. The difficulty of getting into the list of the Scheduled Tribes of Assam was not experienced by the Morans alone; the Registrar General’s note clearly rejected the similar claims of representatives of other five communities on the same ground. Different attempts were made to interrogate and dismantle such criteria. Dr Durlav 226

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Chamua, former General Secretary of the Koch Rajbangshi Sanmilani, one of the largest Koch Rajbanshi community organizations in Assam, argued, The criteria of inclusion of a community to the scheduled tribe are primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, backwardness, contact of shyness etc. But the question is how many communities which are in the list have these traits? Are the characteristics of primitive traits, geographical isolation still there in these communities?51

Chamua’s criticism was misplaced. It is not the ambiguity, but the fallacy of such criterion, particularly its understanding of ‘primitiveness’ based on agricultural practices and the standard notion of religious clientele are obvious in an area where “a number of ritual networks” operated and “political success” depended on localized pacts with different authorities rather than one overarching “religious” idiom of legitimation.52 But we often forget the more contemporary operation of these satras and how a particular discursive regime establishes its hegemony through various means. A long and detailed history of such operations would be futile but given Assamese nationalism’s own standardizing moment in the 1910s and 20s, it is convincing how such performative idioms of discipline operated through Dharma huchori. However, the gap between one performance to another (ten years, three years) itself regales the exclusionary nature of its disciplinary codification. Its exotic possibility materializes only through the duration between one to another; while on the other hand, this enhances its aura in terms of the other exotics of the field. However, the emergence of the reservation politics, particularly their engagement with the official understanding of reservation was not entirely based on colonial categories of primitive or modern. But there was a specific local history to it.

Dr. Dulrlav Chamua, “Bibhinno Jonogosthir Jonjatir Talikabhuktir Dabit Ebhumukhi,” Smiriti Grantha, Sadou Koch Rajbongshi Sanmilonir 24th Yearly Nagaon convention, 2-4 July 1999., ed. Molan Laskar: 1. 52 Bodhisattva Kar, “Welsh’s fallacy: Rereading the Eighteenth Century Ahom Crisis,” ed: Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty, The Eighteenth Century in South Asia: New Terrains (Calcutta:Asiatic Society, 2012) 134. 51

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However, the emergence of the reservation politics, particularly their engagement with the official criterion of reservation was not entirely based on colonial categories of primitive or modern but there is a specific shift in Assamese national politics that determined this reservation demand. It was the appropriation of agriculture and labour, the discourse that had been generated through the different left-nationalist movement of 1950s, 60s and 70s envisaged a new subject of the nation. Mostly based on agricultural techniques and specific cultural traits, the popular nomenclature for such theory is pragatisil jatiyatabad (progressive nationalism). Such traits of commensurability have later been used by different nationalist groups and communities in their different political strategies. For instance, in a memorandum submitted to the Prime Minister of India on 12 July 1990 demanding “the restructuring of India as a true federation on the basis the principle of self-determination to the Assamese nation and others,” Sanmilita Yuva Mancha, one of the Marxist advocates of the self-determination thesis, defined the Assamese nation that consisted of “such indigenous ethnic groups as the Bodo, the Mishings, the Kacharishe Rahas the Lalungs, the Deoris, the tea garden communities and various indigenous communities and all other people who have been assimilated in Assam in the course of time.” But this supposed “political democracy” was not without a fixed understanding of nation and nationality. SYM’s 1986 document on selfdetermination quoted Stalin to argue that “a common language, a common territory, a common economic life and a common psychological makeup. … are the four main characteristics upon which a nationality is framed”.53 The strategy of federalization itself was part of the reservation politics, at least, the question of indeginity here determined a new understanding of communities, its disciplinary ethics mediated through the question primitive and indigenous together. But when the question needed

“Bharator Jati Samsya Aru Asamiya Jatir Atmoniyantranr Adhikar, A short treatise on the nationality question in India and the right to self determination of the Assamese nation,” prepared by Sanmilita Yuba Morcha(SYM), central committee Assam, and published by (Guwahati: General Secretary, 1986): 2. 53

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to be mediated through the colonial ideas of reservation, a dichotomy emerged that only needed to be resolved through the effective political pressure. Such new mediation has also changed the narrative of the cultural origins of Bihu. Lila Gogoi, one of the important publicists of 1980s tried to articulate this new discourse in his celebrated book “Assamese culture.” Of course, he did not reject the old idea that Bihu is an assimilative culture and different racial and cultural identities have contributed to the structure of Bihu. However, at its core it was a non-Aryan ritual and therefore purely of an indigenous character. The emphasis on the “fertility rite” thus produced a nomenclature of tribal, primitive traits that confirms its possible distance from Aryan modern cultural location. Rejecting the etymological connection between Bihu and Sanskrit word ‘Bixub’, he said, There might be a rhythmic connection between the word bixub with Bihu or in later ages there could be an etymological connection between the Aryan word bixub and Bihu but this festival’s origin is much before that. Probably during the period when Australoid culture spread up the Brahmaputra valley… today whatever characteristic of different culture is found, at its core it was a fertility rite festival…the garu bihu had influenced by Vedic rituals but the rituals like bathing the cow with mah, turmeric, bengana, kerela, thekera, jatilaou is very non-Aryan. If these traditions are Vedic than there would have been similar festivals in Aryan areas of India. Only Tamil Nadu’s Pongal festival has a ritual with cows…the fire of the sacrifice (bolir joi kura) was developed for local necessities, in the later period Vedic rituals and hymns were connected..the preVedic fire worshipping Aryan’s main god Magi or Majai’s transformed into the magh bihu’s meji..54

Such particular etymological emphasis of ‘universality’ does not resolve the issue of difference. On the contrary, it intensified it. The ethnicity of that nation now turns it head to make a claim over it. Theoretically leaning on the same understanding of the 54

Lila Gogoi , Asamar Sanskriti ( 1986, Guwahati: Banlata, 2017), 17.

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left histories of 1970s and 1980s, this new popular understanding tried to claim their right over Bihu and its origin from their respective community politics. Using different Bihu

couplets,

through

intelligent

and

somewhat

popular

commonsensical

interpretations, these new understanding tried to enumerate a new origin of Bihu. The Tai Ahom community politics, of course, have a larger share on such claimants as the medieval Ahom political State was also synonymous with the Assamese political state. Quoting a Bihu couplet, Tirtha Phukan, a veteran cultural activist tried to argue that the Ahoms were the harbinger of Bihu in the Brahmaputra valley. (Slowly Bihu arrives Which way does Bihu arrive? Through east, west, north or south Which way does Bihu arrive? A pair of Maantora was there Lying with sickness in the land of Maan When learnt the news of Bihu It came running by)

‘Therefore’, he concluded, ‘Bihu came from Man country with the Ahoms when they migrated to Assam.’ The idea of Bihu origin also coincides with the origin of the dhol. Quoting the Gopal Chandra Barua-edited Assam Buranji, he tried to enumerate the Ahom legend where Langden, the God, gave Khunleng and Khunlai, the predecessors of Ahom royalty who had come down from heaven, with certain commodities and among them there was a pair of dhols. Thus he claimed, In the north of present Myanmar, the name of the state that was established by Khunleng was Mudong Kong. This state was the heart of Tai cultural activities...in Tai language Mung means state and Kong means dhol. The dhol was so pervasive that the state was popularly called as the country of the dhol...but most

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importantly the shape and form of dhol used in Myanmar is same as that used in Assam.55

For the Moran community’s politics, instead of a claim based on some distant land, the strategy was to articulate a more local narrative of their origin in order to refute and reclaim their authority over the origin of Bihu. Accepting the difference of the Moran dhol with the general Bihu dhol, one Goluk Moran wrote, “Generally the Moran dhol is bigger in size and the sound and rhythm would tell one even at a distance it is performed by someone from the Moran community. The rhythm of the dhol would be slow but very deep and heart-rending.” The significant masculinity of the Moran dhol is also symbolic of the deep, inherent masculinity of the Morans. However, such a masculine, separate identity does not resolve the issue of their claim over Bihu as the Moran dhol is different than the Assamese dhol. Thus he wrote, During the reign of Swargodeo Rudra Simha in Rang Ghar for the first time Mukoli Bihu was observed publicly. In other words, that was a Bihu competition. For the sake of competition, the shape of Bihu dhol was made small and the rhythms were made fast. Just like that the Moran dhol of Sadiya’s kasaikhaiti through the time and social process changed its shape, rhythms. But like the Deori and Mizing community, the Moran dhol has still retained its own peculiarity.56

This interesting idea of similarity at the same time emphasizing difference is a complicated story of its own. For the so-called Moamaria revolt of eighteenth century, which supposedly set in motion the disintegration of the Assamese political state, the status of Moran community was far from satisfactory in the hierarchies of the Assamese nation. They have been the targets of many lamentations, criticism from the Assamese national perspective. This construction prevailed, at least until the left historians of the

Tirtha Phukan, Bihur Oitijyo aru Soundarjyo Sandhan (Golaghat: Student’s Stores, 2010), 90-91. Golok Moran, “Moran Bihu- Oitijyo Aru Porompora,” in Motok Somaj Sanskriti, ed. Dipen Moran (Tinsukia: Bengmora Prakashan, 2007), 168. 55 56

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1970s and 80s reconstituted it in positive terms of class and peasant revolt against the oppressive feudal regime. Such a new perspective was used and appropriated in order to dismantle much of the vile criticism coming from nationalist circles. Criticizing such attitude of Assamese publicists, one Pradip Kumar Moran wrote, Honorable Atul Chandra Hazarika by making Moran-Motak some kind of smashed potato wrote that ‘for their lust the whole nation had become degenerated.’ But nobody has told him that in the year of 1228 for whose conspiracy the kingdom of Bodosa disintegrated. Despite that for the sack of Assamese nation, not a single Moran has invoked the issue. In the same tone, Dr Lila Gogoi also shed his tears. Throwing out the Morans from the ranks of Assamese nationality, he lamented, ‘for the abuses of Moran and Motak the Assamese people were in a very deplorable condition.’..The Moamaria revolt was an episode of glory for the Morans but for some of the Assamese it was a period of black stain on the face of Assam. I am not surprized by such an understanding…on 18 April 1999 in Asomiya Pratidin some Gyanandra Sharma Pathak wrote a poem called ‘Bibhatsya Paratikriya’ and he said, ‘ O the betrayers/ the group of Raghab Moran/ some time, I wish, I would cut you all into pieces/put salt onto your cuts, and feed your poisonous flesh to dogs, crows and vultures, but I cannot do that, I cannot feed your smelling poisonous flesh to these innocent birds and animals of my nation/because the crows, dogs, jackal and vulture would die instantly/ which I would never do until my last breath ’ Now readers feel for yourselves. See! How this lover of crows, jackals and vultures shows his hatred for the Morans!57

Such vile polemics have been sharply responded to with a new understanding about the origins of the Assamese political state. Refusing the set notion that Sukapha, the first ruler of the Ahom dynasty was the father of the Assamese nation, it was stressed that it was Bodosa, the Moran king from whom Sukapha inherited the Assamese nation. As 57

Pradip Kumar Moran, “Moran Xokolar Uporat Iman Obisar Kiya,” in Moran Motok , 120-121,123.

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the story goes, King Bodosa had two daughters and Sukapha married both of them. And since the Moran king did not have any male heir, “after his death, Sukapha sat on his throne. Sukapha was a handsome royal. So the Moran people were happy to get such an efficient king. But, sadly, that was the historic blunder of the Moran community.”58 To confirm such claims and particularly, the shared camaraderie between the Ahoms and the Morans, it was invoked that the “original Ahom families” who migrated with Sukpha still make their obeisance to two different ancestors of Moran community. Contradicting Amalendu Guha’s argument that the Tai Ahoms were the harbingers of sali paddy in the Brahmaputra valley, it was the Moran community from whom the Tai Ahom learned the techniques of cultivation. 59 However, the issue is not just about the role of Morans in the disintegration of Assamese political state. The remembrance of the Moamaria revolution through Bihu observances has also been seen as betrayal to the Assamese nation. Usually invoked as a grudge on the part of the community even three hundred years or so after the incident, this issue was so embedded in the polemics that in 1972, a reverse date of Bihu observation was taken after much discussion. As the story goes, the Morans initially observed Bihu by making human sacrifice before the Kasyikhaiti goddess of Sadiya. But during the reign of the Kalasamhati Satradhikar Soturvuj Bihu was “handed down by” by the satradhiakr and monks in the Sattra. However, instead of human, ducks and goats were sacrificed during the observation. While, on the other hand, from the first Wednesday of Bohag, it was shifted to the last date of Sot. During the Moamaria revolt, in an attempt to regain his kingdom, Ahom Swargodeo Lakshmi Simha killed the then Satradhikar Astobhuj and his son. That was a tragic event for the Moran community. That year after observing the doha on sukla dasami, Moran community observed Bihu. From that day onwards, after 58 59

Lakhok Gogoi, “Moran Jatir Samporke Jotkinsit aru Rati Bihu,” p-32, Soumargiri, 13: year 2012-14(2014): 23. Dr Birendra Kumar Gohain, “Moran and Tai Ahom Sanskritik Samanya,” Soumargiri: 11.

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discussion in the sattra with the sattradhikar and the monks, the Morans have been observing Bihu on the first Tuesday after the sukla doxomi tithi of Bohag as uruka, and Wednesday as Goru Bihu. Husori o’ sot, bisiti o sot Wednesday, Thursday It was on Tuesday Uruka has gone by Bihu, Where you hiding?60

The issue was so significant that in 1972, after a discussion by both the satra and the community leaders, the day of observance for Bihu had been shifted to a new day just to resolve the Moamaria memory. In 1972 in the sattra namghar of late Lihing Chandra Mahanta in Hatigarh (Kakopothar) the representative of all the Kalasamhati sattras and members of the Ahom Sabha had decided to push the Bihu observation day beforehand to the first Tuesday and Wednesday after the last day of the month of Sot instead of the first Tuesday after the sukla dasomi thiti of Bohag.61 But the Moamaria and its connection with Bihu has been invoked in different ways to make the universal claim of the Moran community over the Bihu. Using some sort of historical methodology, in an essay one Pratap Hazarika tried to enumerate how the repetitive pharse of huchori, “Oi Gubindai Ram,” actually has aconnection with one iof the legendary figures of Moamaria revolt called “Govinda Gauburha” or “Gubindai Ram.” Claiming that his name was memorialized in huchori performances because prior to the revolt, he was the man who organized people on the bank of Dihing river by performing huchori, the author wrote, “That Gobinda Ram was killed on 6th Bohag, 60 61

Pradip Kumar Moran, “Moran Xokolar Uporat,” 166. Pradip Kumar Moran, “Moran Xokolar Uporat,” 172.

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1692 saka (1790) when he was performing huchori. That was how a popular leader had been destroyed who was keen to organize people through culture. However, his memory is preserved in every huchori pada as ‘oi gobindai ram.’”62 The claims of Bihu or huchori couplets to retrace the history of the Moamaria revolution was interestingly drawn in the essay. Needless to say, the interesting part is not these discourses but the performance that legitimatized the universality of these new conceptualizations. Before I conclude, I would like to draw attention to the recent strategies of Moran community in terms of their official Bihu form. In the wake of the intensification of the reservation demand, “rati Bihu’’ (Bihu performance in the night) has been popularized as the official Bihu of the Moran community. It is not that the other communities of Assam do not have this tradition of “rati Bihu.’ But reclaiming “rati Bihu” with particular rituals, sartorial conventions, particularly in the different areas of upper Assam, Moran politics tried to constitute it as a cultural core of the community. Stressing the non-Vaishnavite rituals, performance, sartorial etiquette-it is difficult to ascertain whether such performative and sartorial principles were developed in order to represent some kind of “primitiveness” of the community, but the hours of its observance-the rati (night) Bihu and the particular rituals of such observation could be a strategy in terms of their primitive nomenclature. A recent documentary, detailing rituals, performative and sartorial etiquette tried to connect the rati bihu with the core of the community. Sponsored by the All Assam Moran Student Union, Moran Jatiyo Mohila Parisad and Assam Moran Sabha, the documentary named Chacksoni-A Night Youth Culture of Assam confirms the significance of “rati-Bihu” for Moran nationalist strategies.

Pratap Hazarika, “Oi Gobindai Ram” in Motok Somaj Sanskriti, ed : Dipen Moran (Tinsukia, Bengmara Prakashan, 2007), 266-67. 62

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BIHU ON THE SCREEN

Criticizing a television broadcast of a huchori performance by Guwahati Doordarshan, poet and literary critic Nirmalprabha Bordoloi wrote in 1985, the Huchori was shot in an open place, near a river bank, under a tree. But where would huchori be performed—in the front yard of a household or on the bank of a river? Are not the Bihu performed ‘under a tree’ and huchori completely different things? Was it impossible for Guwahati Doordarshan to produce a scene of the front yard of a household? Then the huchori was performed with lots of jumps and unwanted, derogatory rustic poses. Instead of doing the performance through circling, they were giving some kind of poses which could easily be regarded like those of clowns of the bhaona. The girls of the group had no idea of what the Bihu dance was. The costume of the Bihu dance was also very surprizing. The primitive, rustic dances were far better than this. Though it is a folk dance, it has to be performed as a dance form. The folk dances are so splendid, graceful! A gamosa on the neck even after wearing riha-mekhela— what is that? Does not the riha-mekhela by itself symbolise Assameseness? Why do we have to wear the gamosa on top of that? The Bihu dance was performed so disturbingly. Could they get so much freedom to kill our culture? Why did they have that person twirling the umbrella in his hand??63

The urban popularity of Bihu, its reproduction in different sets of urban consumption created a new consciousness about the structure, form and their particular relationship with the origin. Of course, Bordoloi was not alone into it. In a response to Bordoloi, one Deba Kumar Saikia of Nagaon also articulated this new anxiety over Bihu performances, etiquette and its divergence from the supposed origin. Criticizing the commitment and sincerity of the organizers of the urban Bihu convention, he claimed 63

Nirmol Prabha Bordoloi, “Asomiya Sanskriti Kun Pothare,” Dainik Asom, May 22, 1985: 4.

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that they were actually undermining Bihu. “Let me give you an example from one of the recent Mukoli Bihu competitions,” he declared. With some 9-10 year-old girls they wanted to inaugurate the Mukoli Bihu competition. I tried my best to make them understand the age-old convention of Mukoli Bihu. I tried to reason with them about the significance of the age of the performer, etc. But they did not pay any heed..64

The identity of Bihu as a practice of courtship constituted a particular discourse in urban reproduction such that children participation in the performance, particularly with young men have been seen as derogatory and obscene. But the question of pedagogical importance of practice, eventually, resolved the issue in the later parts by making a new form of competition called ‘xoru bihuwati’—spanning the age limit from five to seventeen years roughly. However, if the origin and conventions were part of the new anxieties of urban reproduction, the sartorial etiquette of the judges were also constitutive of the deterioration of the ethics of the new production: The judges of bihu kuwari (actually it should be bihuwati) competition, would come to the Bihu convention wearing ‘modern cut disco pants.’ The women judges wear latest Hindi film style saris. Nowadays for any kind of cultural competition, the organiser would invite college teachers...the teachers who have some kind of expertise over the subjects should be invited. But those without the faintest idea about these things—why they have to sit as judges, I just cannot fathom65

The idea of urban reproduction of Bihu with a particular emphasis on maintaining the specificity of the so-called original structure, and the knowledge about such specificity did have its particular constitution or at least it should be constituted through the specific etiquettes within the Bihu convention, was part of the new sensibility of the Bihu imagination. And thus, instead of the commonsensical notion that the college 64 65

Deba Kumar saikia, Dainik Asom, May 31, 1985. Saikia, Dainik asom, May 31, 1985.

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teacher with some institutional knowledge has some expertise over cultural forms, Saikia was concern about a set structure of expertise, particular etiquette, and sartorial agenda when they sit for judging such competitions. Because, this sartorial etiquette not just reproduced a particular performative principle in urban Bihu conventions but also emphasized the non-institutionalized, particular domain of sovereignty of the Assamese nation. And that is why in later parts, we shall see that instead of the college teacher the emphasis would shift to he question of experience or particular upbringing in the career of a judge in the urban Bihu convention. The natural, the primitive, the pristine form of Bihu performance had to be rescued from the invading presence of non-indigenous culture, the culture of Hindi films, its latest sartorial trends and the structure of etiquette. To restrict the usual hiccup, occasional impediment of invading “bojorua sanskrii” (the culture of the market), a single-minded detailing, step by step arrangements of etiquette, sartorial equipment, strict observance of sequences were needed to be invoked, arranged and produced. Relating such facticities, one Govinda Goswami observed, Would the young men have to have beard to perform on the stage. What would happen if one does not have beard in the cheek? Does he need to wear false beard? What should the dhuliya wear-in hand-iron kharu or false dhulbiri of rong patta or should they wear some kind of locket or tabij? Cream colour khaddar cloth or different colour surriya-or short sapkon or he would wear sleeve less ganji with white surriya? Or should they wear by giving two knots on the waist?66

Of course, Goswami was articulating some of the major anxieties of the time. In the wake of the Assam Movement, when the identity of every AASU member was signified through the full-grown beard on the cheek, it was imperative that this masculine signifier should eventually appear on the Bihu stage too. For Goswami and many others, it was a time to resist such eventualities of the time and in that step, a sincere Govinda Gowsami, “Mukoli Bihu, Bihu Kuwari, Bihu Rani Pratijugitar niyamaboli,” Dainik Asom, 3rd April, 1982: 4. 66

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mapping was essential to keep the Bihu stage performance unchanging. Taking the initiative, in the same article put forward some detailed rules for Bihu competitions. From limiting the members of a Bihu group to fifteen to particularities of musical instruments, sartorial etiquette, structure of embellishment, he tried to standardize the proscenium etiquette of Bihu stage performance. The following were the strict suggestions he made to standardize the Bihu performance. 1. Cheap white colour sleeveless shirt with same white colour dhoti with two knots just two inch after the ankle should be worn. 2. The flowers of the gamosa used on head and waist should be sixty and forty five kathi respectively. And the colour should be red. The knot of the gamosa on the head should be on the right while the one on the waist should be on the left. 3. The young men should not participate in competitions with beard. 4. They also should not wear any false ring etc on ear, neck and hand. 5. Along with young men and women the children should not participate in any form of Bihu performance. 6. Along with the features of the body, the performance of the nachoni should be given adequate attention. There is no question of giving extra emphasis on the colour of skin. 7. The competition time for Bihu Kuwari, Bihu rani, Mukoli Bihu, etc. should not be less than half an hour. 8. The age of the nachoni should not be below sixteen years. 9. The nachoni should not participate in competitions with cosmetic makeup, lipstick on lips, kajol or eyeliner, or plucked the eyebrows. 10. Red colour flower, mediocre riha-mekhela or old handmade riha-mekhela made from muga silk could be used. The sartorial etiquette should be that the cloth straight comes till the ankle, a red bouse without any openings

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for the back and belly should be used. No nachoni should wear a gamuscha on the waist. 11. In two hands the nachaoni should wear authentic gamkharu, one old Assamese ornament on the neck. On the ear keru should get first preference. Otherwise japi shaped ring should be worn. There will be no rings on the toes. On the hand, except the gold rings nothing should be worn. 12. There will be no use of false hair to make the hair bun. There will be no net on the hair bun. Only kopou orchids should be used on the hair bun. 13. On the palm of the hands and on the feet henna could be used. Otherwise there should be no embellishment on the palms. 14. The nachoni should not perform by using the hands above the shoulders, and should not perform by raizing the soles of the feet. There will be no dances sitting or kneeling down..

15. Taking a cue from the song, the nachoni should not be performing using plates.67

Against such detail structuring of the Bihu performance, Nirmalprabha Bordoloi, stressed on the issue of folk culture and its “natural” spontaneity as the core of such performance. However, Bordoloi was not against of the proscenium staging of Bihu. In fact, she acknowledged the fact that on the proscenium one definitely needed “an equal, universal, systematic flow of performance.” However, she asserted, “there could not be such strict rules for folk performances.” Despite her articulation of a certain idea of the “natural,” she refuted Goswami’s male chauvinist restriction over “cosmetic make-up” for the Bihu nachonis. Connecting a historical link between different forms of embellishments, she stressed, “What is the harm if girls pluck the eyebrows?... Adoring

67

Gowsami, “Mukoli Bihu, Bihu Kuwari,” Dainik Asom, April 3, 1982: 4.

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oneself is an old tradition – earlier it was kajol, tel-tenga, vermillion,now it is cream, powder.”68 Bordoloi’s own idea of Bihu performance was not much outside the limit of the standardized structure that Goswami was articulating. She was actually representing the idea of the popular in the name of folk.69 Rather than refuting the standardization of Bihu as such, she was actually emphasizing the question of accessibility. Standardization should not disrupt the accessibility of the popular to the Bihu stage. While on the other hand, questioning Goswami’s articulation of “natural” in terms of sartorial, ornamental and embellishment etiquette, Bordoloi was arguing somewhat technological intrusion in order to constitute the body of the Assamese women more prominently in the Bihu stage. However, refusing such modern intrusion over the Assamese woman’s body, one Gunomoni Bora responded, “Will she be okay if someone comes to the stage with bob cut hair, plucked eyebrows, dense cosmetic make-up..Just because from paddy fields Bihu has come to the urban stage, will we reject its authenticity and make this folk dance in the shape of ‘disco-dance’?” Bora asserted that since in the ancient times the nachonis would not have been wearing iron kharu or applying lipstick, it is not imperative that, “just because it’s a modern stage we have to make everything modern.”70 The question of the “natural,” however, did not fit in the idea of the aesthetic temporalities of the proscenium stage, Nirmalprabha Emphasizing the connection between the proscenium aesthetic and the idea of Assamese women subjects, she wrote, in the environment of proscenium stage there is a question of the aesthetic. Today we do not like to wear our clothes without ironing them. There is a difference between the ancient practice of adoration and the contemporary idea 68

Nirmal Prabha Bordoloi, Daink Asom, April 11, 1982: 4. Cf. Stuart Hall, “Notes on Deconstructing the 'Popular’”, in Raphael Samuel (ed), People’s History and Socialist Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 227-239; Robin D. G. Kelley, “Notes on Deconstructing ‘The Folk’,” The American Historical Review, 97, no. 5 (1992): 1400-1408. 70 Gunomoni Bora, Dainik Asom, April 16, 1982: 4. 69

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of beauty. Therefore, before the thousand audiences just to make a little aesthetic sense it is ok if one uses a little bit of lipstick on the lips. Bihu performance cannot become corrupt or non-indigenous just because one uses some powder on the cheek or plucking the eyebrow. I have never seen that one examines whether the colour of lips of Nachoni is from brahmthuri or lipstick or the eyebrow is originally bow shaped or plucked up or whether the colour of the cheek is originally white or it is made white by applying powder.’71

“There are two main structure in Bihu dances, one is household chorus and the other is the scene in nature,” said Jaykanta Gandhiya in his influential book on Bihu. For him, to structure the Bihu performance with its particular specificity, it is imperative to maintain that there should not be any “acting” in it. Otherwise it would disrupt the “natural” performative principle of the form. Invoking a contemporary dancing trend, he noted, “when the young man sings ‘pahar bogai bogai kopouful anisu’ (I have come across the hills with kopuu orchids).72 -the nachoni would start dancing by putting the hands near the hair bun.” “But”, he asserted, “to represent some kind of natural scene”instead of posing like an actress one ust be able to show it “within the bounds of the main poses.” Such strict restriction is important because, “when one cannot maintain the main poses while representing something else, it becomes an act and that itself sabotages the structure of Bihu.”73 Such an idea of “natural,” writer Dilip Kumar Dutta argued, included the poses and structure of the tribal dance forms—in order to represent or assert the universality of the Assamese national world. In the wake of ethnic assertion in the political landscape, such tactical inclusion became imperative. But Gandhiya was reluctant and he was keen to maintain the authenticity of the Bihu form. Instead, he maintained that outside of the Bihu domain, the different tribal communities should exchange and learn each other’s

71

Nirmal Prabha Bordoloi, Daink Asom, April 21, 1982: 4. Jaykanta Gondhiya, Huchori:Mukoli Bihu aru Bihu Nach (Dibrugarh: Banlata, 1986), 35. 73 Gondhiya, Huchori:Mukoli, 36. 72

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respective dance forms. This would strengthen the bonds within the Assamese community. Instead of producing multiple representations in the Bihu, both in terms of sartorial and performative principles, one would learn different tribal folk forms with their proper etiquette.74 In the same response to Dr Dutta on the question of representation of “jatiyo jibon” (everyday life), particularly representative poses like ploughing, jakoi fishing, Dheki-diya(punding rice), weaving, hunting, etc.’ Gandhiya claimed that the practice of hunting is not part of Assamese jatiyo jibon. On the other hand, other respective poses were part of Mishing community’s group dance so except in huchori, if these poses were to be adopted in individual performances like Bihu Kuwari, Bihu rani, etc. the whole structure of Bihu would collapse. Gandhiya argued that instead of increasing Bihu poses by borrowing from other folk forms, it is important to authenticate the available poses of Bihu performance.75 In his assertion, particularly the articulation of authentic Bihu, Gandhiya was not the only authority. But this standardisation moment produced a new shift in the larger imagination of Bihu politics. To authenticate certain Bihu poses, rituals and practices, instead of institutionalized knowledge, the ethnographic knowledge of upper Assam and experience became the main operative principle. Different Bihu scholars with an ethnographic understanding of upper Assam tried to authenticate different ritualistic of practices of Bihu observations. For instance, Hem Buragohain, one of the important Bihu experts of his time, in one of his chapters called ‘Ujonir Bihur toliye toliye” (in the bihu toliys of upper Assam) wrote, From the first fortnight of month of Sot, after the labour of the day, night bihu was performed in the night.n This bihu was observed in every village of Sibsagar and Lakhimpur district. The neighborhood villages of old Rongpur town, this rati Bihu was observed. Though Young women of different villages observed

74 75

Gondhiya, Huchori:Mukoli, 12. Jaykanta Gondhiya, Bihu Xonrokhon Aru Prathyban (Guwahati: Lawyer’s Book stall,2012),

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night bihu, Melmora of Betbari Mouja, Ghorbondhiya of Bokota, Gojporiya of Dibrugarh district were some of the foremost areas of night Bihu celebration with characteristics of their own. Along with all these places, in the neighbourhood of Rongpur, villages like Meteka, Dhuliyapar, Bogidol, Namti, Sogunpara, Janji, Gouri Sagar, Fulpani Siga, Samoguri, Deoroja Moidan; in the upper part of Assam Mautgaon, Gurasuating, Dimporuguri, Borborua moidan, Dekherisiga, Potiyagaon, Bhakatgaon, Dhiyangaon, Thoura Dol, Soliya Suk, Suladhora, etc where night bihu was celebrated with such euphoria...76

But the problem is that this search for the exotic, primitive trail sometime backfires, when these experts tried to constitute certain place as the symbol of primitive. For instance, Bihu expert Jaykanta Gandhiya in Laseng village of Sivasagar district discovered a form of Bihu which he loosely named as “Ghar Bihu.” In this particular form, Gondhiya claimed that the old women of the village after some drinks performed Bihu in some isolated places. Except their female friends, Gandhiya claimed, nobody is allowed in the performance. These Bihuwatis would go to the houses of newly married couples and invite the new bride to perform Bihu with them. “They would perform in the front yard and also in the interior of the house. This is also a form of Ghar Bihu.’ Gandhiya noted.77 However, in a somewhat furious, emotional article, Tirtha Phukan, the Bihu expert and who also belonged to the same village declared that, I have born and brought up in this village. I have not heard that another village existed in this name in entire Sivasagar district. The word Liseng comes from the Ahom language. It means pristine place. In this village and other neighborhood villages like Borcohoki, Nahortoli, Dhamaji, Disangpani, Doba, etc. where I have spent my childhood days. More or less I have spent half of my life there. In that village, there still lie the bones of my grandfather. In the heart of my

76 77

Hem Buragohain, Bihu Akou Ahil (Sibsagar: Udayan Prakashan, 1984.) 56-57. Jaykanta Gondhiya, BihuBidhi Aru Byadhi ( Guwahati: Aakbaak, 2011), 277.

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grandmother lie the roots of the plant bon-nohoru...on the bank of Disang river I sang once the kuhkua nam or Bihu songs.. Do not build a boat out of urium tree It is hard to bend it down at the stump Do not marry a lass with big buttocks It is hard to satisfy her The flowers of Simalu tree are big, Its branches are are shapely Shapely is the chest of my Father-in law’s daughter It is such a beauty to look at. These are songs of the forest. They are sung in the forest only. There is a convention that it should not be performed within the boundaries of the village. That convention had not been broken in those days. And now Gondhiya says that in my village where I born, after drinking xaj the old women dance in some place of village? Compel the new bride to dance and take money for it? The new bride dances in front of father and mother in laws? In the front yard of the house? Brother’s wife dances in front of elder brother? In that Laisang village and its neigborhood such things happens? Not to mention that in that entire region only people from Ahom community live. In that region where without veil not just the young daughters in laws, even the old women never come out before any elders and there this kind of Bihu is performed during the month of Bohag? In the house? In the frontyard?78

In the first section of this chapter, we discussed how through a mutually reinforcing structure of spactacularity and discipline a new subjectivation emerged in the nationalist politics. The successful articulation of that energized mass within the Bihu stage collapsing the boundary between the participatory audience and the guardian of

78

Tirtha Phukan, Bihur Oitijya, Tatporjya Aru Soundrya Sandhan (Guwahati: Student’s Stores, 2010), 119-20.

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Bihu stage. Effective investment in other Bihu symbols produced a complex and uneven repertoire of death, life and memory. That is why within the narrative framework of the Assam movement the grimmest stories of xenophobia, intimidation and targeted violence could be overwritten with romantic, tragic heroic and sentimental tale. In the second section, we discussed how a question of donation, articulation of the idea of Hindi Imperialism produced a new site of Bihu. If Assam movement was producing through the mutually reinforcing structure of spactacularity and discipline, ULFA moment was effective production of the economy of the Assamese subject. The whole attribution of “natural,” outside the neo-liberal economic strategy got reinforced through the utility of the economy of the indegeneity which effective attribution produced a reified Assamese subject. The economy of that subject, ultimately, despite nation’s crusade over neo-liberalism, it reinforced it as a productive subject of that economy. In the third section we discussed the dichotomy of a “tribal” Bihu, its identical, conceptual connection with Assamese nation, while at the same time, its constitutive difference with it. The dichotomy between primitive and modern, the selective investments over historical memories and finally different articulation of Bihu within it are some of the questions the section dealt with. Instead of a singular Bihu biography, the multi-narrative of Bihu, its selective, sometime mutual reinforcement constituted the identity of both Assamese state and the tribal state. Finally, in the final chapter we discussed, how Bihu was standardized, developed for a proscenium stage with particular networks of strategies of nationalist idea of discipline, idea of folk in terms of popular and how finally, how these questions located within a structure of ethnographic reliability.

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This thesis has been offered as a critical biography of Bihu, as a historical account of its multiple incarnations, contested significations and fluid afterlives. The significance of exploring the historical trajectory of Bihu is, at least, twofold. First, it attempts to destabilize such nationalist understandings that naturalize culture as eternal and static. It also demonstrates that culture has no a priori, ahistorical “essence.” This dissertation shows how the biography of Bihu has been produced through a series of interrelated developments in social, political and economic history of Assam under concrete material and ideological conditions. Second, it also tries to point out that the cultural frames through which Bihu was understood, critiqued and reconstituted were themselves products of colonial and postcolonial modernity. The tension between different political and cultural elites, and various popular practices remains a fundamental plot of my narrative. Despite the existence of very different sets of issues at different moments in history, this festival over the last two hundred years has become a main site of debating and establishing the authenticity of a national culture of Assam. State and different non-state actors played historically crucial roles in determining the contours and afterlives of Bihu. On many occasions, the ideas and practices generated by one group were taken up and developed in very different directions by others. Moreover, discourses and rituals of Bihu did not develop in isolation, but rather drew various ideological and performative elements from adjacent cultural forms, in turn also immensely influencing them.

Conclusion

In Chapter one, we discussed how the boundary between the sacred and the profane came to be constituted in the modern discourse on Bihu. The chapter studied the articulation of the practices of “elopement and abduction” of unmarried women by men during Bihu, and how the evangelical discourse of colonial modernity, with active support from the local Assamese “notables”, consolidated the patriarchal power and authority, as it in turn criminalized the emotional worlds and cultural practices of the lower classes in mid-nineteenth-century Assam. Towards the end of the century, the socalled elopement practices and the attending discourses on familial values came to be overwritten by the question of language, as Assamese nationalists sought to reinvent new festival idioms within the prescribed norms. However, by mid twentieth century, a creative tension was generated through the dialectical interplay of profane and sacred in the imagined figure of the “gaoliya.” The figure of the rustic “gaoliya” was now seen from the vantage point of the sacred through a celebration of the new ideas of Aryan, agrarian and organic foundation of Assamese rural life. On the other hand, a severe disciplining of the popular practices was also emphasised to make Bihu worthy of the name of the national festival. Finally, we discussed how different strategies were projected in order to displace the “obscene” character of Bihu. Through textualization and hybridisation of a new literary canon, there was a comparative projection of Bihu namas with world classics. In the second chapter, we discussed certain “derivative discourses” through which the authenticity of Bihu was produced. Tracing the late nineteenth century Assamese publicists’ anxiety over expressive quality of Assamese language, particularly in expressing the ‘universal bhaba,” or the quest for a “homely,” authentic language, we suggested, how Bihu or for that matter the rustic, was rearticulated as the category of sacred.

However,

such

constitution

of

sacred

was

developed

through the

“textualization” and “literization” of Bihu rather than giving emphasis to its performative etiquette or its ‘festival idioms.” Such politics of “textualization,” as we 248

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noticed influenced the performative practices. The rustic practice of “elopement or abduction” also received a considerable discursive shift when the question of specific Assamese bhaba, or for that matter, the essential character of the Assamese nation was articulated in the process of the standardization of Assamese Vaisnavism. In the discursive articulation of a universal, familial Assamese religion, elopement, or for that matter, expressions of Assamese love was projected as constitutive of familial stability and patriarchal consolidation of Assamese social life. This new biography of Bihu was, however, not outside the nationalist aesthetic, despite its discursive constitution of the sacred in the figure of the “gaoliya.” We saw in the third chapter how a new “festival idiom” was produced in the nineteen twenties through different new festivals, and how such festival idioms constituted the new middle-class Bihu. Largely this new structure remained as the dominant form of contemporary urban Bihu festival. In tracing the genealogy of the new “festival code,” particularly the significance of new festivals, we tried to understand the constitution of ideas of effeminacy, the lack of masculinity of Assamese body, the anxiety over female subject of the nation, their delinquencies and how these particularities were amended through festivals like “Jaymati Utsav,” “Lachit Divas” and the literary activism of Assam Sahitya Sabha. The significance of these overlapping networks of different nationalist festivals, driven by a high literary aesthetic idiom, becomes clear when we track the constant traffic in symbols, performances and phrases between the new sarbajanin Sankari religion, its bhakti rituals and Bihu. However, this translation of a new festival code was not a peaceful act. The embedded anxiety over nationalist discipline and the idea of festival had to be resolved. While Bihu was being developed through these particularities as a middle-class festival, the Congress mobilisation of the nineteen thirties tried to resolve the issue of nationalist discipline and spectacular festivals in the rural areas of Assam. A new festival code was generated through sports, processions, public meetings and nam-prasanga as corollary to the mobilisation process of freedom 249

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struggle. This interesting process actually developed a new kind of Bihu “festival idiom”, constituting a new biography that embedded both the “sacrality” of Vasnavism with the “textual” purity of Bihu nama. The fourth and fifth chapter discussed the post colonial history of Bihu. The fourth chapter critically considered the early post colonial government’s approach to Bihu and its radical contestation by the left wing social and political movements. Tracing the post colonial career of Bihu through the newly established Guwahati Radio station and nationalist fantasies over the Assamese Kamrupi School of Music, we saw how a new elite nationalist imagination of Bihu emerged under the financial and logistical support of an upper caste dominated post colonial government. However, challenging such elite nationalist understandings, through different left-wing social contestations, particularly 1950s RCPI, led the sharecropper’s insurgency by emphasizing the agrarian origin and labouring context of Bihu. In many ways, however, this left radical counter claiming of Bihu shared a conceptual unity with the increasingly popular ideas of Srimanta Sangha’s new bhakti movement. Tracing the literary, dramatic and musical composition of various IPTA activists, we discuss the changing understanding of Bihu and its discursive resonance in the debate around two notions of culture (Krishti and Sanskriti) in the 1950s, the anti-riot cultural troupes of the 1960s, and the rediscovery of the Moamaria revolt by the left historians in the 1970s. The final chapter started with the Assam movement and discussed how Bihu was seen as a natural home of nationalist spectacles. The blueprint of networked collective actions that fuel spectacles of a mass movement had been produced. With a successful mobilisation an energised, networked mass was developed collapsing the boundary between participatory audience and a guardian of the Bihu stage. The affective investment in the Bihu symbols like gamucha or dhul bestrode the repertoires of death, life and memory in a complex and uneven manner. This was why within the narrative framework of the Assam movement the grimmest stories of xenophobia, intimidation and targeted violence could be 250

Conclusion

overwritten with romantic, tragic-heroic and sentimental tales. However, from discipline and spectacles, in the 1990s Bihu was produced in terms of Agrarian economic development in order to resist neoliberal capital. A homespun concoction of nationalism and Marxism defined the theoretical terrain of nationalism in the the post Assam movement period.. A particular reification of the authenticity of local production seemed to be the keystone of the new discursive regime. Rather than making, the abstracted body of the local makers seemed to authenticate the authenticity of the making. In this context, we discussed the tribal Bihus, particularly Ahom and Moran Bihu. On the one hand, the question of the “primitive” was tied to the project as the dominant structure of these Bihu festival; on the other, their anxiety was palpable evidenced in the production of the modern with Vaisnavite cultural influence over Bihu. The contesting claims over the historical Assamese political state through Bihu, how both communities used Bihu or its various symbols were also discussed. Finally, in the last section, we discussed how the urban production of Bihu was standardised through the various claims of authenticities, strategies of inclusion of other “Bihu forms” of different tribal communities, and finally the authenticity of performance etiquette of Bihu. This continuing debate produced an ethnographic strategy of claiming the authentic origins by validating the locals and its contestation was discussed. No doubt, the authentication of Bihu as sacred symbol of Assamese nation was a historical moment. Different moments and strategies determined its discursive constituency, while at the same time, articulating a certain kind of Assamese subject. The familial, the linguistic, the relationship between disciplined “festival idioms” and the question of spectacle, the schism between the agrarian and elite were some of the major sites that determined the contesting and temporal claims of Bihu’s profanity or authenticity. That means that it was the shifting grammar or the shifting rules that determined the lexical structure of Bihu. Those rules, however, emerged through 251

Conclusion

different anxieties, strategic possibilities and through their contestations. Instead of understanding Bihu or trying to outline ontology of Bihu, this thesis submits that the shifts and changes of the grammar, manifested in turn through multiple material practices, itself constituted Bihu. Before we conclude, we wish to discuss very briefly how this strict structural relationship between the nation and Bihu performances is being used in completely different way by a new actor in the field called the neo-liberal economy. With the growing habitat of neo-liberal economy, the political charge of the Assamese nation is declining. Instead of the constitutive politics of Assamese nation and its enactment through the Bihu performances, touristic exoticism is growing substantially. Writer Pranav Jyoti Deka very sensibly depicted the plight of a lower caste Bihu nachani in one of his recent story called, “Bihuwati Charai.”1 The young nachani, was trying to make her year’s earning through the Bihu performances in resorts of Kaziranga National Park, the neighbouring tea gardens, etc. by catering to high-profile guests. Despite her humble education, she recited without any accent English translations of Bihu songs as an introduction prior to her group’s performance. The parroted learning, performing Bihu during menstruation evidently substantiate how the tourism industry appropriated Bihu for their commercial strategies. The possibility of earnings made them organise as a group and perform at any cost, as it was a seasonal and one had to remain in touch with the resorts and other tourist networks. At one point in the story, she said, “I have to dance. From March to May is the time of earnings. I have to survive with these earnings for the entire year. I still have to dance even if I die at this time.” 2 However, like any profit venture, the distribution of the earnings is uneven. The leader of the group, one Gogoi da gets the major chunk of the profit as he had to look after the 1

Pranav Jyoti Deka, Bihuwati Charai Aru Annya Galpa (Guwahati: Bandhav,2016).

2

Deka, Bihuwatti, 24.

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transportation, sponsor the expensive silk muga sadar mekhela, the essential sartorial accoutrements of Bihu. Clothes that would otherwise remain for generations, would now wither away in two seasons, succumbing to the high velocity of the Bihu performance The continuous investment on such expensive sartorial accoutrements needed an investor. The nachani’s frequent night outings would not considered sober by the community, and sometime when fights broke out these visits to others became the clue of her transgression. But largely, the community remained silent as Gogoi da, the leader of the group, was formerly a member of the “Sangathan”, the euphemism for United Liberation Front of Assam, the nationalist organisation that wanted to liberate Assam from Indian State. No one would have the courage to criticise them openly. The menace associated with a former militant, the desperate circumstances of an Assamese woman and the new touristic mapping of Bihu as a category of exoticism have constituted the new biography of Bihu outside the hegemony of Assamese nation. Deka’s story has not come out of the blue. Despite its altogether different focus, the Kaziranga Orchid Park, an initiative of Krisak Mukti Sangram Samiti, the radical peasant organisation has to follow this same trend. Kaziranga Orchid Park was initiated mainly to preserve and collect different varieties of orchids and paddy seeds as an extension of their somewhat non-capitalist ecological mandate. But to cater to the need of the tourist, a forty five minutes cultural programme was initiated in every one hour break with an English language introduction to each dance performances like Bihu, the bamboo dance of Karbi community etc.2 In such touristic panoplies, that appropriate imaginaries of the Assamese nation in such museumized capacities, one wonders whether the “authentic” Bihu serves the nation or its “authentic” constitution has become an abstracted commodity of a neo-liberal regime? Will an emancipatory imagination of national 2

My visit to Kaziranga Orchid Park on 24th April, 2017 and my interview with Bedanta Laskar, Advisor, Krisak Mukti Sangram Samiti in Guwahati on 18th June, 2018, from 3PM to 4PM.

253

Conclusion

culture find any alternative shift and constitute the nation as it were in 1920s? That remains to be seen.

254

Glossary

Bihutoli Bihuwan/ Gamosa Dhol

Gogona

Gachtalar Bihu Huchari Bihu

Jeng Bihu

Mancha Bihu Mukoli Bihu

Pepa Pitha Rati Bihu:

Tal

Toka

An open area (traditionally in the middle of cleared woodlands, paddy fields, grazing lands etc.) where Bihu is performed. A piece of cloth used as a mark of respect. A double-headed drum, made of wood and cowhide, that usually accompanies Bihu song and dance. One end of the dhol is played by a stick, the other end is mostly played by hand. It maintains the rhythm of the song. A type of jaw harp, made of a piece of bamboo that has a bifurcation on one end. The solid end is gripped with teeth and the free end is struck repeatedly with fingers to emit the distinctive sound of the instrument. Literally, Bihu performed under a tree. Usually performed by villagers during the first seven days of month of Bohag, blessing each and every household of the village. Literally, stick Bihu. The Bihu performance where only women would perform or participate. This is a controversial but popular term referring to sticks (jeng) used to demarcate the performance area. Literally, proscenium Bihu. Bihu performed on a proscenium stage, mostly in urban settings. Literally, open Bihu. The term emerged in the late 1980s to signify Bihu performances conducted in an open area, as distinct from a proscenium stage. A type of hornpipe, made from buffalo horns. Traditional cakes made from rice flour and coconut. Usually accepted as Bihu performed by women in night in distant fields and wood lands. But earlier reference indicated that in the Rati Bihu young male and female both participated in it. Recently, the Moran Community officially projected the Rati Bihu as specific to their community. A pair of clash cymbals. There are different sizes of Tals, which accompanies Bihu song and dance in different parts. Tal is made of bell metals i.e. bronze, brass, copper, zinc etc. A musical instrument made of bamboo that can emulate the handclaps which carries on the rhythms of a Bihu song. 255

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ENGLISH: Ali,

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Kar, Bodhisattva. “Energizing Tea, Enervating Opium: Culture of Commodities in Colonial Assam”, Space, Sexuality and Postcolonial Culture, edited by Manas Ray. Calcutta: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, 2000. Kar, Bodhisattva. “Incredible Stories in the Time of Credible Histories: Colonial Assam and Translation of Vernacular Geographies”, History in the Vernacular edited by Partha Chatterjee and Raziuddin Aquil. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2008. Pp. 288-321. Kar, Bodhisattva. “Welsh’s fallacy: Rereading the Eighteenth-Century Ahom Crisis,” in The Eighteenth Century in South Asia: New Terrains, edited by Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty. Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 2012. Pp. 129-167. Kelley, Robin D. G. “Notes on Deconstructing ‘The Folk’”, The American Historical Review, 97: 5 (1992), pp. 1400-1408. Kheshgi, Rehana. “Navigating Generational Frictions through Bihu Festival Performance in Assam, India”, Music Cultures, 44: 2 (2017), pp. 48-73. Lelyveld, David. “Upon the Subdominant, Administering Music in All India Radio,” in Consuming Modernity, Public Culture in a South Asian World, edited by Carol A. Breckenridge. London: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. pp. 49-66. Oddie, G. A. “Regional and Other Variations in Popular Religion in India: Hook‐Swinging in Bengal and Madras in the Nineteenth Century”, The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 3: 3 (1992), 191-200. Saikia, Arunabh. “In Assam, an attack on former ULFA militants fuels fresh antiBengali rhetoric’, https://scroll.in/article/848824/in-assam-an-attack-onformer-ulfa-militants-fuels-fresh-anti-bengali-rhetoric (visited on 1 September 2017). Sharma, Jayeeta. “Heroes for our Times: Assam’s Lachit, India’s Missile Man” in Politics of Cultural Mobilization in India, edited by John Zavos et al. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. 166-194.

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UNPUBLISHED DISSERTATION: Sanjna Mukhopadhyay, “Time Off: Holidays, Leaves and Questions of Work in Nineteenth-Century Bengal”, unpublished M Phil in Social Sciences dissertation, Jadavpur University, 2012

INTERVIEWS: Baruah, Joydeep (economist and formerly an award-winning dhuliya during his College and University days) interviewed in Guwahati, 5 July 2017. Bora, Dinesh Chandra (local Assam movement leader and cultural activist), interviewed in Lanka, Hojai, 5 May 2016. Bora, Dulal (cultural and literary activist), interviewed in Puronigudam, Nagaon, 15 January 2016. Bordoloi, Lachit (veteran political activist, human right activist, Assam Movement leader, and civil society activist of the 1990s), interviewed in Guwahati, 5 January, 2014. Chetia, Anup (Secretary, United Liberation Front of Assam), interviewed in Guwahati, 28 December 2017. Dutt, Utpal (cultural critic, activist and broadcaster), interviewed in Guwahati, 14 May 2016. Gandhiya, Jaykanta (author and cultural activist, one of the influential members of Bihu standardization movements of the 1980s), interviewed in Digboi, Tinsukia, 25 March 2016. Laskar, Bedanta (Advisor, Krisak Mukti Sangram Samiti), interviewed in Guwahati, 18 June 2018. Muktiar, Prafulla, Kamal Muktiar, Bhadrakanta Muktiar (teacher, clerk, and a political activist respectively) interviewed in Arjuntol Village of Pathari area of Nagaon District, 16 January 2016. Rabin, Manash (Popular Singer and Lyricist), interviewed in Guwahati, 23 March 2013. Sharma, Kailash (President, Guwahati Bihu Sanmiloni, the oldest Bihu Committee of Guwahati), interviewed in Guwahati, 28 May 2017. Tamuli Phukan, Jiban Chandra (local political and cultural activist) interviewed in Lanka, Hojai, 5 May 2016.

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