Abstract
Bauls, the rural minstrels who sing songs of transformation, are a socio-economically and politico-religiously marginalized cultural population from rural Bengal (both from eastern and north-eastern, India and from Bangladesh). They identify themselves outside of any organized religion or established caste system in India, and therefore are constituted at the margins of contemporary global South. Voicing through their songs and narratives of emancipation, they interrogate and criticize material and symbolic inequalities and injustices such as discrimination and intolerance (including class and caste hierarchies, and other forms of disparities) perpetuated by hegemonic authorities and religious institutions. Embracing a critical communication lens, this paper pays attention to material and discursive marginalization of Bauls and Fakirs, foregrounding voice as an anchor to communicative interrogation of structural and cultural inequalities. Through voice, Bauls and Fakirs foreground reflexive spiritual and humane practices that raise societal consciousness and cultivate polymorphic possibilities.
Highlights
Mad, mad, we are all mad.Some are mad after wealth, And others for glory, Some go mad with poverty.Anonymous Baul Song (Bhattacharya 1969, p. 42)Bauls, the wandering minstrels, are a cultural population from socio-economically and politicoreligiously marginalized sections of rural Bengal (Salomon 1995)
Owing to historically-constituted hegemonic oppression and discrimination, the discourses of the Bauls are delegitimized in dominant discursive spaces
The marginalization of Baul cultural spaces is further reproduced through the co-optive practices of urban incorporation and commoditization of Baul music
Summary
Bauls identify themselves as outcasts of any organized religion and the established caste system in South Asia, constituting the margins of the global South (Akter et al 2017) Through performing their songs, they imagine alternate possibilities of emancipation from dominant intolerances and inequalities, and seek to raise consciousness towards fulfilling a “dream of an alternative, less-exploitative, more egalitarian spiritual and social order”. The Gaines (folk musicians) of Nepal sing songs to depict their negations with material poverty (Harrison 2013); Sufi artists from Turkey and Middle East countries describe their experiences of facing severe threats from conservative Islamic institutions (Otterbeck 2008) and dominant institutions (the state, market structures) through songs Because of their interrogation of hegemonic forms of oppression, Bauls are systematically targeted, stigmatized, and harassed. It puts forth the concept of voice as anchor to emancipatory imaginings in bringing about transformation
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