ORAL PRESENTATION

Abodh: An Enquiry of the Asamiya Bhasha

Salat is one of the five key tenants of Islam. It requires a musalman to offer prayer or Namaz,

five times a day. Now what does a Namazi do, who is not well versed in the Surahs of Arabic

tongue. He simply stands behind the long que of the mosque and follows the moazzin’s call.

Interestingly, like Ginzburg’s miller, this namazi has his own interpretation of the surahs

(both phonetically and epistemically) – this interpretation capturing his own cosmological

belives – an autonomous constituent, but reflective of his material realities. I then have

followed the moazzin in form of Bodhi, to enter the world of Asamiya Bhasha.

Avoiding redundancy in the best possible manner – I must introduce the category of

muharrirs as a literate scribal post of employement which clearly establishes a plurality of

languages – Bengali, Assamese, Persian and even Hindi during the administration of

Tungkhunias et al. It is against this backdrop that one might refer to the Assamese Grammar

of W Robinson and the Grammatical Notices of the Assamese Language by N Brown. In

these two archives are condensed the minute tensions amidst powers colonial and missionary.

While the former is bent on fixing the ‘utilitarian’ features of a recognised Assamese

language, the latter – building on orthographic qualifications, induces a ‘beauty and softness’

to the recognised Assamese language , perhaps gaining a fulcrum of operation on virtues

missionary by assigning a contrast to the metropole Bengali. Without getting further in the

much interesting marsh of this tension, I would caution the arrival of a strong colonial power

– clearly visible in the said archives. It is on this august arrival that one can start to locate a

tripartite tension in categories Sanskrit, Bengalee and Assamese. Bernard Cohn has already
eased my job, by familiarising history of the notoriety in the command of language that the

colonial manifests. I would return to it.

Tillotama Misra, while cartographically and metaphorically situating the Assamese language

has carved out the threshold of duars or gateways for situations cartographic. I build on the

same duar and try to open a window within. Interestingly then for me, windows are a symbol

of the Faustian tragedy. What is the Faustian tragedy? Well, you know it all too well. It is that

edge where you know more than you should – but you can only do so much, or even nothing

– the pain of knowing and being unable to act is more intense than the pain of being unable to

act. How do windows then symbolise this tragedy? Well, I can see the other side, I know it

almost as intimately as one can, maybe even more intimately if I would have been a part of

the outside. But that is not the case. And it can never be. Because the window fails to be the

minute I become the outside. Windows can only work if you know you are inside and remain

so – windows are not doors and doors are not windows. I am reading the Ramnabami Natak

by Gunabhiram Barua. The play mentions the methexis constitutive within a language –

language as the representative of a condensed historic construct and at the same time,

language as constituting and corroborating a contemporary historical reality. At the

intersection of a tradition (of poesies and lyrical narratology and aawaz or sound – as perhaps

in Bharatmuni’s Natyashastra) we find the blossom of a modern agency, where matters

domestic or private overlap the public discourse. A widow is being remarried. Let me add

another pane to this window by reiterating a contemporary scholar;

* The idea that the active moral or political world is inseparable from literary-epistemological

and ontological concerns is congenial to much traditional and modern Indian philosophy

derived from the Sanskrit tradition. The philosopher Bimal Kumar Matilal (1994: 279) has

written of the “uncanny similarity between the pre-modern idea of the self and the

postmodernist discussion of the same.” Later in the article, he explains: “Whether there is an
enduring self or not [there is an agreement] that a perception of its true nature (which may be

either a void or a substantial entity) is what adds the ultimate meaning, value and significance

to our life, which otherwise appears to be only full of suffering, absurd and devoid of any

value” (emphasis in original, ibid.: 291). Another prominent Indian philosopher, Kalidas

Bhattacharyya (1958: 17), has also clearly stated that “the problems of classical Indian

philosophy cannot be nearly formulated as ethical, metaphysical, theological, logical,

psychological etc.” Traditional ideas of moral action included, and were derived from, many

domains that would be considered purely religious or theological, or merely literary, today.

The intellectual historian Nicholson (2011: 74) writes:

Much of the bias against the Puranas [ancient narratives] . . . seems to be motivated by the fact that the Puranas

are mythological or literary texts and therefore are not philosophically rigorous. This idea of the separation

between poetry and philosophy seems to be an unwarranted influence from the Greek tradition . . . it is

demonstrably absent among pre-modern Indian thinkers.

Holding on to that charecterization then, it might make sense to the modern reader, as to how

the contrapuntal cord of tradition and reform are struck at the same time by Barua. But he is

not writing in isolation. The behemoth colonial has already pulled the chains of the language

of violence and violence of language and Calcutta, in its print locomotive has become a site

of contestation between Bengali and Assamese. The latter too, in publications like Orunodoi

and Janaki has developed an arc as broad as the dissimilar similarity – both in thought and

names of a Hemchandra Barua to a Hemchandra Goswami. Let me slit my narrative at this

juncture, only to allow an indulgence in the necrotic act of bleeding red. I am invoking

Lukacs, who in his theory of novel has traced the aesthetic problem of the present as a part of

Hegalian legacy: or in cruder words, the notion that development from historico-

philosophical viewpoints leads to a kind of abolition of aesthetic principles which had

determined development up to that point. A reflective inspection can be traced at the works of
Dr. Mrityunjay and his problems with canonization (as in Grierson through Bodhi) where we

find how the capital with its tentacles of print audience and script homogeneity offers a

pedestal to the metropole Bengal and language Bengalee. The story becomes further bifocal,

as even in spaces like Goalpara, we find a churn on the question of Assamese linguistic

identity, where a plural and docilely fluid language A makes space for a B (for instance

Tagore’s remark of a dialectical Assamese and Odiya) , in toto, helping the category C which

is too white to be ignored. Such plural assimilations are clearly visible when Barua has to

emphasize the kiss of Ramachandra and Nabami in his play as that of a satwik bhaw.

Using Cohn again, we can join these all dots and arrive at two impositions. One, alongside a

very rich pre-existing literary tradition of the Assamese language, writers like Baruah are

active contributers to the definitely modern category of the said enquiry, manifest with

institutional, Western as well as bhadralok Indian developments. And two, more importantly,

as the tributaries and distributaries fight over the concord and discord of literature, thus

language in the cachement of Brahmaputra, the most definite metaphor/ end/ beneficiary like

the Bay of Bengal remains the Colonial, extending its rights sovereign – creating its

provincial state. How successfully then has the Assamese Language been defined, conceived

and historicized depends on one’s gaze – either the glorious emolument in Schedule VIII or

the shuttle between passport offices, who like Bodhi’s Kandali – many still take!
Act 1 fatalism, tithi, garbhadan, astrologer- calculation, distant land, shivratri festival,
medicine woman – kam sindur – made servant relation, Nabami read, Bengali books, x
Asamiya Lorar Mitra – Orundoi, print handwritten books, jornam, meeting – salary,
propaganda - awareness

Act 2 Phakua, spring – naturalism – lady, choupat, bilwa, escort, bihu – five holy men,
nageswar, providence, shastra god law, satyug, agbiya, fish – vegetarian,

Act 3 Holi, Ramnabami, Bihu; chakari, social security, independence, durbasha, ring, Manglu
(Lorenzo) – feudal, kiss – satvik bhav, social taboos

Act 4 kakoti mahajan, pinda, Ram sin, Parasar samhita, custom of land, change with time,
PROGRESS, evil combat, molest Manglu

Act 5 Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, mokattama, gosain, khel, age of cash, custom ‘done no
wrong’, tragedy – death, lesari.