Occidentally Yours
Why Assam’s Bihu is an egalitarian form!
By Somnath Batabyal
Driving along NH37 in Upper Assam Nipin, my driver hits the brakes and makes a swift U-turn. Ten minutes into our morning’s excursions and we have found exactly what we’ve been looking for: a group of about twelve young adults dressed in red and gold confidently making their way into the front yard of a rural household. The women are all wearing fine handwoven silk mekhla sadors and the men carry instruments. They’ve come to perform for the family, who wait for them on the porch with tea, poppy-seed and coconut snacks and later the offer of haaz (rice beer). This visit – the joyful practice of singing blessings to the families of the entire village – is known as Husori, and is one of many beautiful components of the Assamese festival of Bihu.
“This is incredible,” I gushed to my guide Kankan as we drove away from the dancing and merriment. “Why don’t we see this sort of thing in Delhi? You could export this stuff and reach a huge audience!”
“Why?” He sounded surprised. “They get many chances to perform locally. People here aren’t really interested in all that name and fame stuff.”
It was an interesting response. I had become used to hearing about states like Rajasthan where folk culture, though exported throughout India and the rest of the world, is always discussed in terms of crisis: disrespected folk musicians, endangered instruments, the hegemony of classical music. Yet in Assam, a state framed by the mainstream media in terms of perpetual crisis, here was a folk culture in apparently good shape.
What was the secret?
Since the 1950s, when the stalwarts of Assamese culture brought Bihu from rural yards to city stages, the festival’s dances and songs have been accepted by the middle and upper classes too. No longer considered by these arbiters of taste as the simplistic and bawdy songs of peasants, Bihu forms are now taught in state schools and folk musicians are given government scholarships. Whilst say in Rajasthan music is stilled trapped by caste and gender, in Assam the daughter of a doctor dances in step with the daughter of a driver, to the beat of a professional male drummer.
The division between the classical and the folk worlds is also more permeable. I met a teacher who taught Sattriya dance in the morning, a highly nuanced classical form developed in the monasteries, and pelvic-thrusting Bihu moves in the afternoon. To the same students. Classical Sattriya dance has not been reified beyond reach and both are patronised equally.
But winning the approval of the middle class alone is not enough to ensure the survival of a culture. Revived forms divorced from social context are at best a colourful spectacle, at worst nationalistic jingoism. Assam is one of the few states where land distribution after independence worked and farmers became the owners of the earth they cultivated. Bihu – one of only a handful of non-religious fertility festivals across the whole of India – is perpetuated by people with an investment in the fertility cycle. The joy of a successful harvest when crops succeed is real. It feeds the family.
The festival is thus rooted in everyday life. Dance moves evoke ploughing and sowing, and the words of songs are full of abundance and love.
‘Fish are jumping in the ponds!
The cowsheds are full of cows!
Darling, I’ll play the dhol and pepa
And you will dance the whole day through!’
Assam’s geographical and political marginalisation has in a strange way allowed it to make up its own rules. A state framed in crisis and isolated from the global economy has become culturally self sufficient. Away from announcements of the demise of their art form, artists earn an income, and children want to learn the dhol from their fathers. It’s something for our ever-so-pious development brigade to consider.
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Somnath Batabyal is Fellow at the University of Heidelberg. A former journalist, he is interested in news production practices in Indian media. His book, Making News: Behind the Scenes at Star News and Star Ananda, published by Routledge is scheduled for publication later this year. When not following such lofty pursuits, he dabbles in fiction and is experimenting with graphic novels.
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This column appears in Sunday Guardian as Nomad Notes and can be read here