Chennai Conference Special Folklore As Discourse
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1 A QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER FROM NATIONAL FOLKLORE SUPPORT CENTRE Volume 3 Issue 2 Serial No.15 March 2004 Chennai Conference Special Folklore as Discourse INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 3 ISSUE 2 SERIAL NO. 15 MARCH 2004 2 BOARD OF TRUSTEES CHAIRPERSON Komal Kothari NATIONAL FOLKLORE SUPPORT CENTRE Director, Rupayan Sansthan, Folklore Institute of Rajasthan, Jodhpur, Rajasthan TRUSTEES National Folklore Support Centre (NFSC) is a non- Ajay S. Mehta governmental, non-profit organisation, registered in Chennai Executive Director, National Foundation for India, India Habitat Centre, dedicated to the promotion of Indian folklore research, education, Zone 4-A, UG Floor, Lodhi Road, New Delhi training, networking and publications. The aim of the centre is Ashoke Chatterjee to integrate scholarship with activism, aesthetic appreciation with B-1002, Rushin Tower, Behind Someshwar 2, Satellite Road, Ahmedabad community development, comparative folklore studies with N. Bhakthavathsala Reddy cultural diversities and identities, dissemination of information Dean, School of Folk and Tribal Lore, Warangal with multi-disciplinary dialogues, folklore fieldwork with Dadi D. Pudumjee Managing Trustee, The Ishara Puppet Theatre Trust, developmental issues and folklore advocacy with public B2/2211 Vasant Kunj, New Delhi programming events. Folklore is a tradition based on any expressive Deborah Thiagarajan behaviour that brings a group together, creates a convention and President, Madras Craft Foundation, Chennai commits it to cultural memory. NFSC aims to achieve its goals Jyotindra Jain through cooperative and experimental activities at various levels. Professor and Dean, School of Arts and Aesthetics, NFSC is supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation. Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Molly Kaushal Associate Professor, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, CONTENTS C.V. Mess, Janpath, New Delhi Munira Sen Editorial............................................................ 3 Executive Director, Madhyam, Bangalore Conference Concept Note.................................... 7 K. Ramadas Conference Programme...................................... 8 Deputy Director, Regional Resources Centre for Folk Performing Arts, Udupi Excerpts from the Presentations.......................... 10 P. Subramaniyam Director, Centre for Development Research and Training, Chennai Post-Conference Conversations: Y. A. Sudhakar Reddy Observations .................................................... 13 Reader, Centre for Folk Culture Studies, S. N. School, Hyderabad Folklore and Development.................................. 15 Veenapani Chawla Director, Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Research, Pondicherry Folklore and Identity.......................................... 18 Folklore and Ideology......................................... 20 EXECUTIVE TRUSTEE AND DIRECTOR Folklore and Contexts......................................... 23 M.D. Muthukumaraswamy Book Review...................................................... 26 STAFF REGIONAL RESOURCE PERSONS Recent Events.................................................... 27 Assistant Director V. Jayarajan T.R. Sivasubramaniam Administration Kuldeep Kothari COVER ILLUSTRATION Moji Riba The performers at the conference, from left to right: Programme Assistants K.V.S.L. Narasamamba Aparna, Gandhi Arumugam, J. Vaidyanathan, Primadonna Khongwir Nima S. Gadhia Bharathi Thirumagan, Muthu Ganesan, Subbu Arumugam, Rita Deka Parag M. Sarma Premeela Gurumurthy, S. Thirumugan and Akhila. Librarian Sanat Kumar Mitra R. Murugan Satyabrata Ghosh THIS ISSUE Shikha Jhingan The focus of this issue of Indian Folklife is on the NFSC’s Archival Assistant Susmita Poddar conference on Folklore as Discourse, which was held from Ranga Ranjan Das M.N. Venkatesha February 2 – 4, 2004. This conference was organised in collaboration with the Centre for Indian Languages, Mysore, Support Staff INDIAN FOLKLIFE and the Department of Anthropology, University of Madras, Y. Pavitra EDITORIAL TEAM Chennai. P.T. Devan P. Sivasakthivel M.D. Muthukumaraswamy V. Thennarasu Editor All communications should be addressed to: C. Kannan Eric Miller The Editor, Indian Folklife, National Folklore Support Centre, Guest Editor (current issue) 7, 5th Cross Street, Rajalakshmi Nagar, Velachery, Chennai - 600 042 (India), Tele/Fax: 91-44-22448589 / 22450553, P. Sivasakthivel email: [email protected], [email protected], Page Layout & Design [email protected] http://www.indianfolklore.org INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 3 ISSUE 2 SERIAL NO. 15 MARCH 2004 EDITORIAL 3 so much traditional folklore — and oral-centric culture in general — continues to live here in Asia is a great stimulant and advantage for Asian Folklore scholars, who are living in the midst of the activity, and who have the linguistic and other cultural knowledge necessary to investigate it. Due in part to the wonderful contribution of the Ford Foundation, Indian Folklore scholarship has had especially wide and deep exposure to the performance centred approach, and there has been a great deal of communication with members of the generation of USA Folklore scholars which originally developed this approach. People who might not appreciate the Ford Foundation’s support of Folklore scholarship in India will be pleased to learn that the Ford Foundation has indicated that it will be reducing the level of this support. The time is coming for Indian Folklore to be more self- supporting, both economically and in other ways, and this is all for the best. For one thing, the case will have to be made to the Indian people that they should increase The Asian Century of Folklore their support for Indian Folklore scholarship. The Folklore, Public Sphere, and Civil Society symposium Scholarship: Reflections on that was held in New Delhi in 2002 added a new the Chennai Conference dimension to Folklore studies. In that symposium, the concept of the public sphere, which has been developed Eric Miller by the German social philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, was applied to folklore performance. The public sphere approach to folklore looks at the ways folklore performances raise n the 19th century, a good deal of Folklore scholarship I and discuss public issues, and at the interactions between around the world was carried out by people of the the performers and the societies around them. The public colonial occupations, especially administrators and sphere approach to folklore is now a vital part of the new missionaries. They perceived and collected folklore as Asian Folklore scholarship. objects (such as stories) and classified these objects into pre-conceived genres (such as folktale, legend, myth, What might be some of the other hallmarks of Asian — etc.). In the latter part of the 20th century, a group of USA and specifically, Indian — Folklore scholarship in this Folklore scholars developed the performance centred century? Three themes that emerged at the Folklore as approach to folklore, which views folklore as a process of Discourse conference were: 1) The need to see the data communication, and this approach has been applied from the points of view of the people who produce it. around the world with excellent results. 2) The need to be open to new paradigms, models, tools, and theories that might emerge in the course of working Now we have arrived in the 21st century, and a case can with local data and social conditions (this might involve be made that this might be the Asian century of Folklore adding to and/or modifying already existing theoretical scholarship. Some evidence that might support this approaches). And, 3) the need to use Folklore scholarship supposition can be found in the dialogue that occurred for the benefit of the community that produced the in and around the Folklore as Discourse conference that folklore, as well as for the benefit of Indian society as a was held in Chennai recently. The current issue of Indian whole. This might include applying knowledge from Folklife presents this evidence. folklore (the activity) and Folklore (the discipline in which What are some factors that might suggest that we might the activity is studied) to development projects (more indeed be in the Asian century of Folklore scholarship? about this below). This theme of the social responsibility Situated between Africa and Oceania, with strong cultural of the scholar to apply scholarship in practical ways for and other links to both of those regions, Asia can be the benefit of people was very prominent at the said to be in one of the centres of the developing world. conference, and appears repeatedly in the pages that Many traditional forms of performance, and craft follow, in the transcripts of the post-conference production, continue to exist in Asia. Although folkloric conversations. processes of communication and community continue to operate wherever people live, in the West most of the *** traditional folk storytelling and theatre forms long ago What might be some practical applications of folklore were separated from ritual, and vanished. The fact that and Folklore knowledge? As mentioned, in the course INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 3 ISSUE 2 SERIAL NO. 15 MARCH 2004 4 EDITORIAL of the conference numerous scholars called for practical The globe is an increasingly small and inter-connected applications — but there was little in the way of specific place. Humans are beginning to plan life and culture in suggestions or proposals. Please permit me to state some our soon-to-exist (and already existing) spaceships and ideas