Ethnicity and Contemporary Assamese Writings *
Assamese as such is not a mono cultural embodiment; it is
rather a composite manifestation of multiple voices. Hence, Assamese writing is
characteristically polyphonic with multiple nuances arising out of varied
ethnic vantages. Contemporary Assamese literature betrays a peculiar awareness
of the world and its various complexities, while being rooted to its locale. This
has, perhaps, resulted in the involved idiom of some recent Assamese poetry. The
ubiquitous element of protest of the post colonial scene has also formatively informed
this poetry. This is evident in Samir Tanti’s (b.1956) ‘How do I Blame It’:
How can I hold hunger
guilty
hunger is my
childhood’s bounty
leaning on its shadow
I played the flute
played being Shyam
–Kanu
back to back I dreamt
and one day drank a
toast
I have no quarrels
with it
How can I hold hunger
guity
hunger is my mother’s
first miscarriage
the third world of my
agony.
(Anthology
of Contemporary Poetry from the Northeast p. 65. Tr. Pradip Acharya)
This poem addresses the native reality of the workers in the
tea estates of Assam.
The sentiments are human and universal and can be likened to the protest in
Black poetry. This has been given a more intimate, personal touch by Jiban
Narah (b.1970) in his ‘Mother’ included
in his collection of poems, The Buddha
and Other Poems:
Mama, you are
drinking more than your need
the
grey crop on your head worries you no end
and
you drown yourself in the cup
as
we are away, you call and holler, pause and wail,
and
duck your tears deeper in the pillow.
You’re
getting on in age, Mama, but don’t you cry
don’t
you drink more getting mad at what father says
you’re
addicted you’re hitting it hard
as
the night grows you bend over, then sit up again,
you
call out to the stars and howl at the moon
you
wail, and wailing burst into song
don’t
you wail so hard, Mama
let
the doves settle on the boughs
or
their sorrows too might flow wailing,
if
they wail your breasts would go dry
A lean river
swells again routinely
your
dry breasts wouldn’t ever-
it
ails all old women
why
would you wail?
(Tr. Pradip
Acharya)
Jiban Narah belongs to the Mising community. An academician
by profession, he teaches Assamese, writes in Assamese and in terms of his
temperament and attitude belongs to the contemporary time, but his linkages
with his native ethnic roots remain vibrant to inform his creative
explorations.
Protest gets militant in the poems of Megan Kachari (b.1967)
alias Mithinga Daimari who was the cultural and publicity secretary of the
outlawed ULFA and is in jail now. His poems translated into English and
published with the title, Melodies and
Guns (2006). The book was edited by Indira Goswami and was released in the
Frankfurt Book Fair around 2007. Protest is poignant and finds a passionate
manifestation in Daimari’s poems as in his poem, ‘Megan and Stray Ramblings’:
Tears make me drink till I am sozzled,
The night sky shivers at my mad
rants
My ruined vitals go alert like a
cat,
And the startled whore spits at
me
Out of hatred, sheer hatred....
Like erosions I steadily break
and splinter,
Breaking against the bend in my
heart.
The river of sorrow rushed
relentlessly on
Don’t you cry anymore,
Leave me your eyes,
I’ll do the crying.
(Melodies and Guns, p.13. Tr. Pradip Acharya)
The reflection of folk realities is not peculiar to
contemporary Assamese poetry alone. Sibananda Kakoty, a significant short story
writer of the period, bases almost all his stories on the quotidian actualities
of Vaishnavite hamlets in central Assam. His series of stories on the
‘Bridle Path’, especially ‘The silver roll of the bridle path’, exploits the
sacred and the profane, ghosts and goblins as they figure in folk beliefs. The
stories of Arupa Patongia Kalita, however, concentrate on women’s concerns. One
of the most significant contemporary novelists, Mamoni Raisom Goswami (Indira
Goswami), presents the rural women’s lot with telling candidness. In her
stories and novels she often moves beyond the confines of her village to varied
locales. Her protagonists inhabit different areas of experiences and the
narratives are well researched. Her Pages
Stained with Blood is one of the few significant Indian novels on the 1984 Delhi riots. While Neelakanthi Braja feelingly recreates the life of widows in the
temple town of Brindavan.
The range and magnitude of earlier novelists like Syed Abdul
Malik, Navakanta Barua, Debendranath Acharya or Rangbong Terang are hardly
encountered in present day fiction. Abdul Malik’s Longing for the Sunshine, and Devendranath Acharya’s Anya Yug Anya Purush creatively document
significant social realities often neglected by history. Nabakanta Barua’s Kapiliparia Xadhu has an intimate
classicism and he presents the Roman myth of Hero and Leander as if it were a
native sprout. Rongbong Terang’s Rongmilir
Hanhi provides an intimate narrative on the ethnic life-world of the Karbis.
Among the recent fictional works, perhaps, the most
significant is Rita Choudhury’s Makam which followed her earlier
historical fiction, Deolangkhui. These two novels have opened up new
narrative possibilities to resurrect ethnic histories of the communities from
the brink of oblivion. Deolangkhui is the tale, with the vivacious
details, of the ethnic history which the mainstream chroniclers reduced into mere
footnotes. Makam, on the other hand, is the epic narration of an ethnic
entity that has not only been erased by the social narratives but also has been
unceremoniously abandoned by the national memory of the land as history’s wretched
orphans. The novel rediscovers the vibrating Chinese community of Assam who
settled way back in the early 19th century and were forcefully
displaced from the spaces that they so endearingly made their native hearth. Deolangkhui
and Makam provide the alternative routes to reach out to history.
Rita Choudhury has achieved a rare literary distinction by being able to resurrect
the ethnic entities that had to smart from the prolonged silencing of their
subdued voices. Her narrative in Deolangkhui creates a historical
trajectory to penetrate deep inside the territories that have been perpetually
relegated outside the ambit of institutional historiography. She recaptures the
histories of the indigenous ethnic royalty that was thriving only in the varied
textures of folklore and community memory. She reinvents the indigenous ethnic
legacies of the Kacharis, the Chutias, the Koches and others enabling readers
to look beyond the received texts of history.
Makam, perhaps, is the only full scale novel
written in the subcontinent that makes a compassionate account of the
unspeakable suffering of the Chinese community in India. This is a novel that depicts
poignant human tragedy of a community who seemed to have been accursed with
eternal suffering. She rediscovers the forgotten people who were a vibrating
community in Assam during the early tea plantation period in colonial Assam in
the 19th century. The Chinese were the first tea garden workers in
the British gardens in Assam.
They eventually settled in upper Assam, became a part of the state,
made this their own land and allowed their roots to grow deeper through local
marriages and mixing with the native populace. They made important contributions
to the life and culture of the land including giving Assam its distinctive
architecture for they were the ones to have given characteristic pattern of
housing with the use of woods and local materials like bamboo. They were also
the ones to have built the palaces of Coochbehar king and the zamindar of
Gauripur which later became the models for regal architectural structures. Makam
narrates the story of their devastating sufferings that followed after the
Chinese aggression. Their forceful eviction from their ancestral hearths, their
deportation to unknown destinations across places all over India and the
atrocities they were subjected to during their those terrible journeys, their
being forcefully pushed into the Chinese border and their similar sufferings in
China under the draconian communist regime have formed the central theme of Makam
which narrates the overwhelming suffering experienced by this small Chinese
community which was quite akin to the atrocities unleashed during the
Holocaust. The feeling and compassion with which the novel narrates the
sufferings of a tiny ethnic entity force the readers to reorient their conventional
understanding of the values like patriotism, political ideologies and
nationalistic pride. The novel has expanded range of the ethnic discourse in
the context of the Northeast.
The composite culture of the Assamese people is made of
diverse ethnic communities. Perhaps, because of this that it has not degenerated
into near uniformity of life style, consequent upon globalization, and literature
even now, in our mobile spaces, has remained distinctive. Anupama Basumatary
who belongs to the Bodo community gives a feel of fresh realities in her poems
like ‘Snail’:
Those days I picked the upside down
snails
From
among the stalks of growing grain
And
filled my creel till the neck.
It
was fun removing the shells
and
watching their recoiling tongues
before
I boiled them.
As
I sucked the sap and threw the shells
They
lay creaking on the floor
in
a certain strange rhythm
that
hid the agony of their dying.
Now
I crawl around the sea-shores
clamber
about the land and water
to
look for the roots of that strange note
as
the marauding waves draw me back and fling
Srangely,an
unseen hand picks me up
Sucks
my sap and leaves me empty
The
shell of my body creaks
in
the agony of the heart breaking
and
makes the strange measure of a sad strain.
(Tr. Pradip Ahcarya)
Saurav Saikia and Anubhav Tulasi are mainstream Assamese
writers. But they reflect an abidingly dense, sensuous rural reality with
modern awareness primarily because of their warm intimacy with their roots. Saurav
Saikia’s ‘A Shadow in the Rain’ invests a casual urbane scene with a passionate
awareness of the country:
Suddenly it poured
and at the corner of the floating
balcony
the sky glowed
May be the market at Rani had
daubed itself in chiffon dazzle
by then
I too had ventured out to buy an
autumn
blue,a doe’s eyes
And at that instant I saw
not ease,but an ease-thirsty
bird,as it were!
Loose T-shirt,tight blue jeans
May be she had come shopping with
her mother
to place this alien form in front
of the Bijulee theatre
Ah! As if the rain,and the rain
went away
The eyes pouring on me stayed
stuck to the trees.
(Tr.
Pradip Ahcarya)
In like manner, Anbhav
Tulasi’s ‘Evening in the Village’ is a
metaphoric reconstruction of a petite country scene:
Evening descends on the village
Painting
blue the warp and woof of clouds
Damsels
coop in pigeons
with
blue feed
In
the temple- hall too
beats
of the blue drum
Blue
water sprouts out
of
the willed pond alone
Village
belles lay bare their blue to the river
filling
the jars with the evening
The
blues plod back home.
(Tr. Pradip Ahcarya)
On the other hand, Kabin Phukan(b.1964-2011) has taken a
deliberate anti romantic stance in his earlier poetry but the following shows
that his anti-romanticism is not a negation of human intimacies and sentiments.
His poems, as Pradip Acharya would put it, “retrieves words lost in dictionary
and gives them currency” as in ‘A Little Colour’.
I
want a little colour,just a dash.
Green,if there is,if not a little red.
Or something veering on the brown.
Even vermillion will do.
If
not,just pure white.
I’ll put a dot on the setting,mellow sky
Of evening strains.
.........................................................
Giving
the bride the ceremonial bath,
and, after a dip in the Luit,
with corn on the winnowing fan
on the magnifying glass
will go round and round in dance
suppressing the heart’s wail.
(Tr. Pradip
Acharya)
Assam
also has a rich heritage of theatre that began way back in the early sixteen
century with the Ankia Naats of the
Vaishnavite saint and reformer, Srimanta Sankardeva. Theatre emerged as a major
popular art form in recent times with the advent of Bhramyamaan Theatre or Mobile Theatre groups. The major dramatists
that had given a definitive character to the theatre movement in Assam were, Birinchi
Kumar Barua,Satya Prasad Barua, Durgeswar Borthakur, Bhabendranath Saikia,Taffazzul
Ali, Jayanta Barua, Dr.Bhupen Hazarika and the like. Amongst the Assamese
playwrights, Arun Sarma is the most academically acclaimed. His plays, Mr.Nibaran Bhattacharya, Ahaar and Aditir
Atmakatha, mark a modernist beginning of Assamese theatre. His plays are
also considered to be the first Assamese plays to have experimented with the
absurdist theatrical elements.
Assamese writings are not confined to the geo-political territory of Assam alone. Assamese literature gains
its multi ethnic diversity and varied cultural perspective through the writings
that have come from beyond its boundaries. Some of the most significant names
of Assamese literature do not belong to the geo-political territory of Assam
but Arunachal Pradesh. Lumer Dai was one of the first major literary voices in
Assamese from Aruncahal Pradesh. His works like Paharar Sile Sile, Prithivir
Hanhin, Mon aru Mon, Koinar Dam et al
stand out as some of the most significant creations in Assamese from across its
borders. In contemporary Assamese
literary scenario Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi is the most prominent from among the
writers in Assamese from Arunachal. Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi, a career bureaucrat
and the winner of Sahitya Akademi Award for Assamese writings, has truly
expanded the landscape and the horizon of the Assamese literary imagination.
The life and the rich nuances of the Apatanis, the Adis, the Abors, and the
other ethnic communities of the state have become parts of authentic literary
narrative of Assam through the writings of Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi. The greatness
of his writings lies in his ability to transcend the limiting compulsions to
merely let his narrative degenerate into cultural documentations. His writings
have recreated the life of the people with its varied dimensions. Some of the
most significant works of Yeshe Dorjee Thongshi are Linjhik, Sonam, Baanh
Phoolar Gondh, Sha Kata Manooh, Bih Kanyar Deshat and the like. Historically, Assamese fictional writings
began from the ethnic landscape as the writers like Rajani Kanta Bordoloi and
Birendranath Bhattacharya through Miri Jiwari and Yaringom had launched
the tradition of modern fiction writing in Assamese. Both these works narrate
the life of two major ethnic communities, the Misimgs and the Nagas. But with the writers like Lumer Dai, Yeshe
Dorjee Thongshi and Rongbong Terang the ethnic imaginations have found expressions
through its own voices. Thongchi through
his narrative achieves the idioms to narrate the subtle nuances of his society
characterized by its multi-ethnic reality. His narrative, to a large extent,
negotiates with the abiding sense of distrust that emanated in the intra-ethnic
transactions in his society in the wake of the social transitions affected by
the onset of modernity. In the land of pastoral innocence, the arrival of
modernism has brought along with it the different values like the primacy of
material pragmatism which has greatly changed the traditional foundations of
the ethnic societies. This has also led to growing misunderstanding and
distrust among communities, erosion of their moral universe and destabilization
of the vantages from where they used to look at themselves. Dorjee Thongchi has
also taken up the issue of seemingly innocuous intrusion of the missionaries
that has gradually dislodged the abiding embodiments of their traditional
religious and spiritual faiths resulting in the consolidation of culturally
incompatible values in their societies.
One major site of Assamese writings that lie beyond its
boundaries is Meghalaya, Garo Hills to be precise. Garo Hills in Meghalaya is a
home to multi ethnic cultural identities. Apart from the Garos, who are the
major community in this part of Meghalaya, there are some other prominent
ethnic communities like the Koches, the Rabhas and the Hajongs who have
steadily making their literary expressions through their richly endowed Assamese
writings. Umendra Koch in his “My
Beloved Country” evolves a different mythic constituency by brining in the
myths and folk believes associated with the geo-cultural spaces of his land:
This is the land of clouds
With the enchanting mysteries of the hills
My beloved country.
The delicate clouds float like
Restless children in search of
The warm love of mother mountain
Along the uneven mountain groves
Rocky terrains, the huts and the trees
The wind blows with a long sigh
The clouds shed tears throughout the
year
You would hear the heart rending wail
of
The lovers- Bisop and Bidon.
Their cry freezes in the wide heart of
lover Umiam
Countless faces of the flowers in the
other bank
Adorn the Memang land of Balphakram.
Homeless souls wander
In the bank of Simsang
In the green grassy meadows of Golf
Link and Ward’s Lake.
(Tr. J. Prodhani)
Poems of Kushal Koch reveal deep pathos
that subtly characterizes the introspective consciousness of his community
against a backdrop where social living, at times, becomes a veritable challenge.
He expresses the awareness of a deep seated melancholy in his “After the
Sunbath”:
Since
there is nothing to be called as my own
I
have saved just my mind
For
the days of future turmoils
I
measure the warmth of the day at night
Measure
the beats of my heart
In
fact, no one understands that
In the scorched heart
A river used to flow
The moon used to brim
The river banks with its dazzle
A plateful of famished meal
And a split heart
You would get
A well preserved heart
I swear
I am so lonely these days
As if am I a puppet in the hands of
void.
(Tr. J.
Prodhani)
Satindra Hajong, who belongs to the Hajong community living
in the Garo hills, endeavours to gain an approximation with the divinity while searching
for a spiritually endowed path:
O my Lord
Thou giveth me the path
That is enlightened by your grace
Giveth me the path that leads me to the
Buddha
Or giveth the path that would make
This earth my neighbour
(Tr. J.
Prodhani)
Minakshi Buragohain teaches Assamese at
Tura Government College.
Her short stories are cosmopolitan and she is at ease with both urban and rural
milieu. Her narrative is enriched by her underlying humour as in her short
stories included in her collection, Hatikhutarar Shopon.. Her novel, Nokme,
is an authentic portrait of the Garo society. She affectionately fictionalizes
the subdued pains of a common Garo woman through her protagonist, Nokme. Minakshi
Buragohain’s narrative opens up the possibilities of the deeper understanding
of the Garo society for the mainstream Assamese readers for whom the ethnic
society of the Garos, to a large extent, has mostly remained elusive following
cultural distance that occurred for various reasons.
Assamese contemporary
writings reflect a deep resonance of the intimate folk realities of diverse
ethnic communities. These writings make successful attempts to transcend the
confines of, what Pradip Acharya calls, ‘accessible history’. In his essay, ‘Meandering
in Assam’, Prof. Acharya writes, ‘In fact, we are so used to the written word
that we forget that there were centuries of literature before the first word
came to be written. Folk tales, songs, riddles etc.(oral literature) lengthen
our past, and they are handed down from generation to generation, and in a
place like Assam,
they persist till this day. They change and are often added to. They are living
memory, not ethnography.’ (2009, pp. 25-26)
References:
Acharya, Devendranath. Kalpurush.
Guwahati: Banalata, 2007 (3rd Edn).
Acharya, Pradip. ‘Meandering
in Assam’
in Glimpses from the North-East. New Delhi:
National
Knowledge Commission, 2009.
Buragohain, Minakshi. Hatikhutarar
Shopon. Guwahati:L Akhar Prakash, 2009.
__________________Nokme
Guwahati: Purbanchal Prakash, 2010.
Chakraborty, Paritosh.
Ed. Paharor Okho Ting (A Collection of Essays). Tura: Tura Sahitya Charcha Kendra, 2007.
Choudhury, Rita. Deolangkhui.
Guwahat: Jyoti Prakashan, 2010 (7th Edition)
______________. Makam.
Guwahat: Jyoti Prakashan, 2011
Kachari, Megan. Melodies and Guns. Ed. Indira
Goswami.NewDelhi.UBSPD,2007
(first
reprint)
Koch, Nirmal. Bodhidroom.
Borkona: Borkona Kali Dhaam, 2011-08-14
Koch, Umendra. Spriha
(Anthology of Assamese Poems) Tura: Eeu Dee Printers, 1997.
_____________. Jagriti
(Anthology of Assamese Poems) Tura: Eeu Dee Printers, 1998
Narah, Jiban. The Buddha and Other Poems. Calicut: Monsoon
Editions, 2008
Tanti,Samir,. ‘How do I
Blame It’ in Anthology of Contemporary
Poetry from the Northeast. Eds. Kympham Sing
Nongkynrih and Robin S.Ngangom. Shillong; NEHU 2003
Deka, Basanta. Ed. Assam: Land and People. Guwahati: K.C.Das Commerce College
Publications, 2009.
*This
is a modified version of the paper presented in the National
Seminar on Literary Trends: Northeastern
Trends and Streams. Organized by WB
State University in collaboration with Sahitya Akademi at Bharatiya Bhasha
Bhavan, Kolkata, 18 & 19
August, 2009.
