Performing and Supplicating Mānik Pīr Infrapolitics in the Domain of Popular Islam Syed Jamil Ahmed In isolated rural pockets of the ethno-linguistic region of Bengal, which sprawls across an international border separating Bangladesh and West Bengal (India), a number of performances are held in honor of a Sufi culture-hero popularly known asM anik Pir.1 These performances assert that Manik Pir is a miracle worker who was born by the generative action of a flower and not the conjugal union of humans, and that the pir possesses the power to reinstate eyesight, enable pregnancy, restore life to animals, and empower the lame. He can also restore dead humans to life and cure all forms of illness. Numerous devotees supplicate Manik Pir in times 1. Among the Sufis, the term pīr, derived from the Persian, denotes a spiritual director or guide. Syed Jamil Ahmed is a director based in Bangladesh, and Professor at the Department of Theatre and Music, University of Dhaka. He has received two Fulbright fellowships (1990, 2005), has published essays in Research in Drama Education, Asian Theatre Journal, TDR, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, South Asian Popular Culture, and New Theatre Quarterly, and has taught at Antioch College, USA (1990), King Alfred’s College, UK (2002), and San Francisco City College, USA (2005). His book- length publications in English are Acinpākhi Infinity: Indigenous Theatre in Bangladesh (University Press Limited, 2000), In Praise of Nirañjan: Islam, Theatre, and Bangladesh (Pathak Samabesh, 2001) and Reading against the Orientalist Grain: Performance and Politics Entwined with a Buddhist Strain (Anderson Printing House Private Limited, 2008). TDR: The Drama Review 53:2 (T202) Summer 2009. ©2009 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 51 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.51 by guest on 24 September 2021 of distress, especially when all other means fail.2 The performances and rituals supplicating Manik Pir function as “infrapolitics” of the subaltern classes, i.e., “a wide variety of low-profile forms of resistance that dare not speak in their own name” (Scott 1990:19), effectively generating “resistance of a different kind: dispersed in the fields we do not con- ventionally associate with the political; residing […] sometimes in what looks like cultural difference” (O’Hanlon 2000:110). The Figure 2. Sahar Ālī Sardār as Mānik Pīr brings Kānu Ghos. (the doll) back to “invisibility” of infrapolitics life in a mānik pīrer gān performance at Kāsimpur village in Sātkhirā district, is largely by design, part of a 23 October 1995. (Photo by Syed Jamil Ahmed) tactical choice of the subal- tern classes facing situations of fear, intimidation, and, borrowing a phrase from Marx, “[t]he dull compulsion of economic relations” (1965:737) that enforces subjection. Hardly traceable in the public transcript, (i.e., “the open interaction between subordinates and those who dominate” [Scott 1990:2]), the subaltern classes articulate their infrapolitics as a hidden transcript or the “discourse that takes place ‘offstage,’ beyond direct observation by the powerholders” (4). In my examination of how infrapolitics operates in the domain of “popular Islam,” a term that refers to, for the purpose of this essay, “the derivative and synthetic patterns of the little tradition characteristic of communities on the periphery rather than at the center of a putative Islamic civilization” (Gaffney 1992:39), I first explore indigenous performances of Manik Pir and then investigate the rituals of his cult. Both of these sections remain anthropologically informed and attempt to unravel the devices that the cult of Manik Pir generates in laboring against threats of extinction and assimilation while at the same time seeking to enforce domi- nance by exercising symbolic violence and promoting the cult’s religious habitus. A substantial number of popular (“folk”) genres—such as tales, theatrical performances, songs, and religious rituals—operate in a realm that lies strategically between public and hidden transcripts, where they articulate disguised ideological insubordination and critique the dominant classes “while hiding behind anonymity or behind innocuous understanding of their conduct” (Scott 1990:xiii). 2. All the information incorporated in this essay regarding performances and practices related to the cult of Mānik Pīr, unless stated otherwise, have been gathered by field-level research investigations. Information from Sātkhirā and Khulnā districts in Bangladesh, and Kolkata, Nadiyā, and North 24-Parganas in West Bengal has been gathered by the author from four investigations conducted on 23 October 1995 (in Sātkhirā), 7–8 October 2007 (in Sātkhirā), 2–3 November 2007 (in Sātkhirā and Khulnā), and 27–30 March 2008 (in Kolkata and North 24- Parganas, West Bengal). Alim al-Razi, a PhD candidate at the Department of Theatre and Music, the University of Dhaka, has gathered information from Syhlet; Santanu Halder, an ex-student of the Department of Theatre and Music, has collected from Kotālipādā, in Gopālgañj district; Ānanda Dāsa, local correspondent of the Daily Sangbad in Jessore, from Jessore district and Saymon Zakaria from Kuśtiyā district. Figure 1. (previous page) A performance of mānik jātrā by the Śobhnā Mānik Jātrā troupe on 2–3 November 2007, at Śobhnā village in Khulna district. Sitting on the “throne” is Jayanūr Bādśāh, SyedJamil Ahmed the king of Bālur Bāzār. The musicians are sitting to his left and right. (Photo by Alim Al Razi) 52 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.51 by guest on 24 September 2021 Figure 3. Sahar Ālī Sardār, a fakir of Mānik Pīr, Figure 4. One of the musicians as Maynā Bud.i begs invoking Mānik Pīr in a mānik pīrer gān forgiveness from Sahar Ālī Sardār as Mānik Pīr, performance at Kāsimpur village in Sātkhirā in a mānik pīrer gān performance at Kāsimpur district, 23 October 1995. (Photo by Syed Jamil village in Sātkhirā district, 23 October 1995. Ahmed) (Photo by Syed Jamil Ahmed) Performing Manik Pir in the Domain of Popular Islam It was an October evening in 1995. I was sitting on the straw-strewn ground of the courtyard of a farmer’s homestead in Kasimpur, an average village not far from Satkhira, a town in south- western Bangladesh. A little away from me, at the center of the courtyard, the asar (performance space) was already set up for a manik pirer gan performance. A mat made of date-palm leaf lay awkwardly on the ground; it was not large enough to cover the nine foot square space. At its center was a bamboo pole that held up an awning also providing support for a gas-pressure lantern emitting a harsh glare. Children and adult males sat all around the asar, their attention silently focused on the performers. Women sat further away, where the glare of the lamp had softened considerably. A substantial number of the spectators were Hindus, Muslims being the majority by only a slim margin. On the western side of the asar lay the (a low wooden seat), asan Performing and Supplicating M Supplicating and Performing on which was placed a camar (a whisk; fig. 2) and thea sa (a small baton with an inverted crescent attached to its top). Five musicians were playing their instruments: the harmonium player sitting on the side opposite to the asan; the judi and the dhol players on the northern side; and opposite to them the prem-judi and the cau-tara players.3 Three of them were Hindus and two, Muslims. They were all males, farmers by profession. The gayen (lead narrator) was a Muslim. Wearing all white—a pañjabi4 and a pair of pyjamas—he was standing near the center of the asar facing the asan as he sang a song invoking Manik Pir and inviting him to occupy the asan (fig. 3). a 3. The judi is a pair of cymbals; the dhol, a two-sided drum; the prem-judi, a percussion instrument made of two P nik rectangular wooden pieces; and the cau-tārā is a four-stringed instrument. i 4. A pāñjābi is a loose full-sleeved shirt worn as an upper garment. See figures 3 and 4. r 53 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.51 by guest on 24 September 2021 The gayen was Mohammad Sahar Ali Sardar, a fakir5 of Manik Pir from the nearby Akhrakhola village who had married and settled down as a farmer after obtaining permission from his guru Takabbar Ali Baul (from Bhañga village in the same district). Sahar Ali is a mechanic of shallow tube well pumps and sells medicine at local hats (weekly markets), where he sings marfati songs6 to draw a crowd. I was on a field trip for my doctoral research on the indigenous theatre of Bangladesh when I accidentally landed at the site of this performance of manik pirer gan. In rural pockets of Satkhira administrative district, farmers (mostly Hindus) often pledge (manat) such a performance to Manik Pir when a member of a family is seriously ill or when pestilence strikes their cattle. After the pestilence passes or the ailment has been overcome, a performance is sponsored in fulfilment of the pledge. On this occasion, a Muslim farmer had sponsored the performance as a pledged offering after members of his family had been freed from a long bout of persistent sicknesses of various kinds. Sahar Ali began to perform “Kanu Ghošer Pala” (The Episode of Kanu Ghoš), possibly the most popular piece related to Manik Pir in Bangladesh today. As he sang, describing as well as enacting what transpired in the lyrics, the musicians played their instruments and then joined in to sing the refrain.