Bamboo Flowering in the North-East - Wiki - National Folklore ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

are primarily responsible for the calamity. At last, thegods apologise and appeal to Kansari to save the world.Kansari brings the food and water back into the world,then brings her consort back to life, blesses her ardentfollower, the Kunbi, and at last takes her place of reverencein the conglomeration of the gods - the Devasabha.Although other versions of the Kansari story differ fromthis version almost in every literary respect, there aresome common patterns of structure, behaviour andstatement implicit in them are shared by all the versions.The first and foremost thing that one notices in thesestories is a kind of social hierarchy implied there. Amongthe characters depicted, several are ‘gods’. They have acommunity of their own. There are also some ‘kings’.As against these powerful entities, there are the ‘men’,The protagonist is supported in this fight by naturalelements such as clouds, wind, thunderstorm, and theanimals and birds befriended by him. They are peers ofthe protagonist, not slaves or servants to his command.With the help of these friends from the natural world,the cultivator protagonist defies the powerful lords andestablishes his supremacy in cultivation and hisunchallengeable relationship with foodgrain, with thegoddess Kansari promising the Kunbi, “I will always staywith you. I will give you prosperity. Toil in the soil; holdalways a stick in your hand. Feed the hungry. I’ll be withyou.”There is another interesting character-motif in the stories.There is Yehu Mawli – Mother Yehu — who commandsall the seeds of foodgrain. In case of want of seeds, theKunbi can assuredly go to Yehu and ask for seeds (onreturn basis). Yehu certainly is not a memberof the Devsabha, yet she commandsrecognition among the gods; the Kunbisrevere her and depend on her. In one of thestories, Yehu is depicted as an old woman(doshi), with eyes as big as the wheel of acart, one requiring space of twelve bullocksfor her seat and one calling with a robustshout. In another story, Yehu is an asceticmaid, who conceives by ‘consuming thebread half consumed by Mahadev.’ Kansariis born. Later, she finds out the whereaboutsof the irresponsible father from Yehu andmanifests her powers to him.the ‘Dubla Kunbis’ (meaning poor farmers, also specificcommunity names). The focal point of the story is alwaysthe equation and tension between these two groups. Apartfrom the gods, there is also a Bhagwan who seems to bea higher god with wider powers and who is beyond thetension between the two.Among the gods there is a ‘Mahadev’. He is powerfulamong the gods, commands their community and he isthe ‘lord’ for the ‘people’ in the respective story. He isthe chief of ‘Dwaraka’ city, which is the seat of power ofthe gods. One can see a certain acceptance of his place ofpower at the primary level; yet, when he, along with hisassociates turns atrociously against the people out ofjealousy or greed, there is revolt against him by theprotagonist, either Kansari herself in a human form orthe Kunbi, the cultivator of foodgrain, or sometimesKansari herself as the cultivator. It may be a mild fightonly to cleverly escape the atrocity or exploitation, or maytake the form of a clearly spelt out, explicit war involvingthe phenomena and affecting the entire humanity.Bhagat narrating the story of KansariKansari, as a character in the stories, is oftendepicted as a young girl. The girl hassuperhuman qualities suggesting or leadingto prosperity, yet she herself denies allpleasures and comforts and prefers to livea commoner’s life, toiling in the soil. Kansariis an independent mind, nobody can own or commandher. She lives where she wants to live, does what shewants to do; she values and maintains her dignity andindependence. In several stories, she comes to the Kunbi’shouse as a diseased and dirty creature and tests hischaracter. While all others despise her, Kunbi is kind toher and offers her regular shelter and bread to be sharedwith him. Kansari is pleased with this nobility and blesseshim with prosperity. But when this prosperity leads toindignant treatment to her, she immediately leaves him;all his prosperity vanishes and in repentance, he yieldsto her.As one looks at a number of these stories together, therearise several questions in one’s mind. First of all, shouldthese stories be grouped together as a whole or shouldthey be treated as separate tales? All the stories are referredto by the community members as ‘the tale of Kansari’,yet there is so much variation in every aspect that it ishard to relate any particular version to another, sometimeseven the character of Kansari herself being a somewhat16 INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 2 ISSUE 3 JANUARY - MARCH 2003
Courtesy: The Painted World of the Warlis (1998)secondary or peripheral one. Then what is it that holdsthese tales together so decisively in the collective mindof the people? As said earlier, in spite of all the variationof story-line or plot, character, length, style, presentationas well as intended audience and effect, each of the stories,even as a stand-alone, definitely carries a statement in it- a statement of the seemingly weak fighting their wayagainst the powerful for justice and rights, for values theycherish. And it must be this implicit statement that bindsthese separate tales together for the community.This leads us to further questions: What could be thesignificance of this statement for these people? Whatmeaning does this statement carry with it? What exactlydo these tales want to say? Who is this Mahadev? Andwhat conflict do these tales speak of?To think on these problems, one has to look at the historyof this region, the region on the borders of today’s Gujaratand Maharashtra states. For centuries, this fertile regionhas been ruled by one or another ruler from outside. TheIslamic sultanate, the Maratha rulers and the British, allhave governed this region, of course through the localrepresentative of the commanding power. And, throughoutthis period, the tiller tribes who settled in these junglesknown for its teak trees transformed the difficult region,through their toil, into a fertile land. While the tiller, keepinghis needs to the minimum, has cherished the thick of thejungle, the flora and fauna, the waters and mountains thathave actually entered his pantheon, the ruler’s concern hasbeen the revenue, from field and from forest. Though wedo not have much account of the common man’s positionfrom the earlier period, in the later period, there have beenpeasant uprisings and resistance movements in the tribalcommunities of this region. In The Coming of the Devi, DavidHardiman has given a very interesting account of how thenotion of resistance to the ruling class as well as the tradingclass got built up in the tribal population and found itsexpression in a seemingly religious movement of the date.A ghangli Bhagat singing during Kansari PujaThen, should we say that the tales we are looking at couldbe a memoir of a conflict woven with mythology? Is itremembrance by an exploited, marginalised, and mutedsociety of a voice raised against exploitation, perhaps withsome little success? The notion of defiance of the powerfulmay, perhaps, be a reflection of reality to some extent, ormay be purely ‘wishful thinking’ of a mutated milieu.What one gathers from this literature, oral though, is thatit must have been a conflict not merely on economicgrounds, but also of a value system. Through the defianceand humiliation of the exploitative, atrocious, andpowerful, and through the simultaneous despising ofpersonal pride and impudence, do these tales not seemto cherish and present a community’s value system as‘sacrosanct’ for its posterity? At one level, they take theform of a morality tale celebrating specific values andshaping up the collective mind. At the same time, in theevent of the values being challenged, they also suggest apossibility of standing up to face the challenge, lest thevalues be compromised with.It would not be possible, nor would it be justified, to tryto find a one-to-one relationship between historicalhappenings and the depiction in the stories. All one maysay is that in these stories, one may catch a reflection of aprolonged conflict between a land-based people and thepowers that governed them through the course of history.Whether it is the reflection of a specific fight against aspecific ruler of a specific time, or, if by making ‘Mahadev’a prototype for the ruler, it is an effort to keep the conflictover the value system alive in the collective conscience,it is hard to say. Yet, with their potential to weave togetherhistory with the values or religion of a people, and tocarry the fabric for future generations, these tales certainlydemand a far more serious investigation andunderstanding.THE GODDESS OF FOODGRAIN17
Page 1 and 2: IndianFolklifeA QUARTERLY NEWSLETTE
Page 4 and 5: (UNIDO) committing funds. Other all
Page 6 and 7: Can oral literature inform us about
Page 8 and 9: This is called jan baha “to make
Page 10 and 11: Internal metaphors like“humans ar
Page 12 and 13: ‘A Spear Hurts Its Maker’:Thoug
Page 14 and 15: AnnouncementTHE MUSIC OF SOUTH INDI
Page 18 and 19: Tribal Cultures and theProblems of
Page 20 and 21: Courtesy: http://rosswarner.comrega
Page 22 and 23: The kinship system is one ofthe old
Page 24: Indian Folklife Regd. No. R.N. TNEN

Bamboo Flowering in the North-East - Wiki - National Folklore ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?