Nayonika Sen Week 10

Alkinare Nahor Gache Baga Baga Phul: A tragedy


          'Alkinare nahor gache baga baga phool' that translates to 'big flowers on the riverside'. It is an upbeat song and the melody seems rather joyful. The words of the song convey anything but. A little bit of historical context may make a few things clear. Although this song is not a 'Dalit' song per se, but is a song written by the Santhal Adivasi community in West Bengal. In the mid 19th Century, in 1865, the Doars (Assam) were being made into enormous tea estates; they needed labour. The Santhal Tribals were lured with hope of economic prosperity to go and work in the tea estates. Except they were sold as what can only be termed as 'slaves' to these tea estates, and often through 'brokers'. They were forced into indentured labour. 
          This song written in a dialect that is a sort of mix of Bangla, axomia and sylheti is a song of the pain and the brutal working conditions of this community. It talks of all the aspirational dreams of the Santhalis and sharply contrasts it with the reality of their poverty and terrifying working conditions. The songs talk of the how they thought that they would one day have roofs over their heads, that Assam would be a place where they will have a better life. But reality is their sore and arch-bowed backs from picking leaves, hunger, and the feeling that they have been cheated by their masters and can now no longer escape. 

 A few lines (roughly translated) are: 

"There are big flowers on the riverside,
I raise my head to look at it, 
down comes the whiplash
on my bare skin.

Dreams of tulsi leaves, 
and betel leaves in paan, 
'Bura Sahib tricked me
said, come to Assam"

            Stories of migrations of the marginalised remain mostly the same. They migrate to another place in search for better opportunities but in the end somehow always end up chained in bonded labour. The peculiarity is that the harsh reality hasn't changed drastically even in the 21st century, where migrant labourers more to metropolitan cities in search of better living conditions. It's almost the same in Post-colonial neo-liberal India as was in colonial India under the British. What is interesting about music from marginalised communities is its ability to change the methodology of understanding and evaluating history. How can we recover sub-altern agency in history? Histories of shared communal experiences transmitted through inter-generational retelling of stories of marginalisation through song, art, music, and dance. It is nothing but performative literature: an account of oral history. 

A link to the song: 
         
Nayonika Sen

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