READING THE METAPHORS IN BAUL SONGS: SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF RURAL COLONIAL BENGAL Manjita Mukharji (nee Palit) School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2009 1 ProQuest Number: 10672931 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10672931 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT This thesis breaks with existing scholarship on the Banls by moving away from an exclusive interrogation of their esoteric beliefs and practices. Instead, we forestage the socio-historical dimensions of metaphors found in Baul songs. Rather than using these metaphors as keys to unlock the esoteric registers of Baul praxis, we see how the metaphors themselves are drawn from and mediated by the Baul singer-composers’ locations in history and society. In the Introduction of the thesis, we sensitise the reader to the history and politics of the particular frames used by song-collectors through which the songs—our primary material—have become available to us. Thereafter, we develop our enquiry through five specific case-studies. In each case-study, i.e. those of gender, agrarian relations, domestic space, transportation and spatiality, we look at clusters of metaphors around each of these themes and see how the metaphors themselves reveal clues to both the specificities of the Baul singer-composers’ socio-historical locations and their experiences of these locations. Throughout these studies we remain interested in how Baul singer-composers as members of a larger rural society resist and/or negotiate with the structures of domination. In conclusion, we argue that not only is their resistance intimately tied up with their specific socio-historical experiences—which they often also share with non- Baul contemporaries—but also that both their experiences and their modes of resistance are themselves shifting and historically contingent. Thus, just as we find several shifting layers in their resistance to structures of power, similarly we find multiple shifting locations for their experiential body. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration ............................................................. ................................................................... 2 Abstract.......................................................................................................................................3 Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................... 4 Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................7 Prefatory Notes On the Scope of the Study..........................................................................................10 On the Structure of the Thesis ................................................................................... 14 On Terminologies (Baul, Subaltern, Body)..............................................................17 On Transliteration ....................................................................................................... 20 Introduction Of the Politics of the Archive and Reading Metaphors as Socio-Historical Clues ................................................................21 I. At the Looking Glass: Framing Baul Songs......................................................... 22 Orientalist Framings ......................................................................................... 24 Romantic-Nationalist Framings ...................................................................... 30 Spiritual-Idealist Framings ...............................................................................43 Esoteric Framings..............................................................................................48 Sexual Liberalist Framings...............................................................................55 Marxist Framings................................................................................................................. 57 II. Aims and Limitations of the Thesis ...................................................................... 62 Locating the Aim...............................................................................................62 Problems of Authorship....................................................................................63 Of Metaphors and Meaning ..............................................................................68 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 74 Chapter I Victorian Bauls and the Performativity of Gender: Locating Historical Specificities and Sites of Resistance in the Gender-Metaphors of Baul Songs.........................................................................................................................75 I. Disaggregating Gender Identities....................................................................... 76 II. Baul Scripts for the Imperial Dramatis Personae ..............................................86 III. Performativity of Gender and Resistance to Hierarchies of Power. ............... 95 4 Conclusion, 107 Chapter II Ek Rajye Hole Dujona Raja, Kar Hukume Goto Hoye: Proja Metaphors of Changing Agrarian Power-Relations and Everyday Peasant Resistance.............................................................................................................. 110 I. The Impact of the Land Settlements in the Peasant Consciousness ..............114 II. The Language of the Zamindar-Peasant Relation in Peasant Resistance 122 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 130 Chapter III Amur Ghorer Chabi Porer Hathe: Criminality, Colonialism and the Home in Early Colonial Rural Bengal...............133 I. i. The Broken House in Baul Songs .................................................................... 134 ii. The Role of the Village Watchman in Crimes in Rural Bengal ....................137 iii. Complicity of Zamindars in Crimes in rural Bengal ..................................... 143 iv. The Role of the Daroga in Rural Bengal.........................................................148 II. Bodily Architectures............................................................... 156 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 164 Chapter IV Hariram Manob-Dehe Baniyechhe EkAjob Kok A Study of the Transportational Metaphors in Baul Songs........................................166 I. Representations of the Changing Technologies of Transportation in Baul Songs..........................................................................................................................169 i. Metaphor of the Boat................................................................................... 170 ii. Metaphor of the Steamer..............................................................................174 iii. Metaphor of the Railway.............................................................................177 II. Transportational Machines as the Divine Creation of the Godlike Englishman ................................................................................................................ 181 i. The Spectacular Machines of the Divine Maker: Symmetries between British Natural Theologists and the Bauls..............183 ii. Machines as the Handiwork of the English God ....................................... 191 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 198 Chapter V 5 Brohmo-Onde Ondo-Bahire: A Study of the Spatial Metaphors in Baul Songs........................................................................................................................199 I. Spatialising the Body: The Ultodesh of the Womb............................................199 II. The Body-Space as World-Space....................................................................... 210 III. The Spatial Politics of Naming and the Body-City Metaphor.......................219 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 230 Conclusion............................................................................................................................232 The Experiential, Esoteric Baul Body.....................................................................235 Resistance ................................................................................................................... 238 Historical Specificity of Methodology Deployed and Recent Trends in Baul Songs ...................................................................................243 Bibliography...........................................................................................................................247