Author: Samudra Gupta Kashyap
Publication: The Sunday Express
Date: October 5, 2003
What the government couldn't, a
600 year old theatre form does in Assam. It's brought rival tribes together,
writes Samudra Gupta Kashyap
IT was no mean feat. When people
from five villages of five separate districts belonging to different ethnic
groups collected in Guwahati to participate in a five-day festival of bhawona
last week, it spelt hope for the divided state. Bhawona is a traditional
Assamese theatre form that was invented more than 600 years ago by medieval
social reformer and artist-preacher Sankaradeva.
For long Bhawona has been a preserve
of Assamese-speaking people who formed the bulk of Sankaradeva's followers.
Though all over India there were bhakti saints at the time, Sankaradeva's
movement was a bit different. It had more to do with community participation.
Last week's festival saw communities
such as the Bodos, Mishings, Sonowal-Kacharis, Nepalis and tea tribes perform
a bhawona each.
''Sankaradeva's idea was not just
to make religious worship easier and comprehensible for the common man.
He also had an eye on the various ethnic groups who lived in the Valley
that was divided into several kingdoms, and worked for a solution to bring
all of them under one umbrella,'' says Dr Pradip Jyoti Mahanta, who teaches
literature and folklore in Guwahati University.
Bhawona, in fact, is a unique dramatic
form that is a combination of art, music, performance, dance, singing and
teachings from religious scriptures.
Conceived by the Asom Satra Mahasabha,
the apex body of over 500 vaishnavite satras (monasteries) that followed
the path shown by Sankaradeva, the bhawona festival was also called Setubandha-building
bridges. Bhadrakrishna Goswami, president of the festival organising committee,
says it was an attempt to repair the torn social fabric of the state.
''The Assamese society must realise
that we have deviated quite a lot from the path shown by Sankaradeva 600
years ago. For this the society has already paid heavily with the different
ethnic groups moving away from one another resulting in social disunity
and chaos,'' says Goswami, a satradhikar or head of a satra.
The initiative has brought about
some changes. Says Lakshmi Kanta Mahanta, former secretary of the Satra
Mahasabha: ''In the recent past the Bodos were up in arms against the Assamese.
But when we took the concept of bhawona to different Bodo villages, we
found that the Bodo tribals were only too keen to take part in it.''
A team of trainers then spent about
a fortnight in a Bodo village and the village was enthusiastic over the
idea of staging a play.
''In a tea garden at Rajabari in
Upper Assam, the tea labourers of Chotanagpur origin not only vied with
each other to get roles in the bhawona, but even decided to give up liquor
till the final rehearsal was completed,'' adds Narayan Chandra Goswami,
a satradhikar, who is also the president of the Mahasabha.
As an art form too, the bhowans
have attracted much attention. The performances still use the scripts that
were written by Sankaradeva. The language it uses is medieval Assamese
with a sprinkling of brajavali. The themes are episodes mostly from the
Mahabharata though a couple of them also draw on the Ramayana.
''But the most wonderful aspect
is that Sankaradeva had integrated a lot of elements that he picked up
from various ethnic groups of the Brahmaputra Valley. That was enough to
bring about an emotional integration and set a tradition that was on the
verge of losing its relevance and utility,'' says Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta,
an IPS officer, who also belongs to a satra, and is managing trustee of
Srimanta Foundation-a cultural body dedicated to development and propagation
of satriya art and culture. For Assam, the festival was a real achievement,
especially at a time when successive governments have failed to restore
social and communal harmony.
Encouraged by the success of the
festival, the Asom Satra Mahasabha and Srimanta Foundation are now planning
to make this an annual event.
