Antara Bhattacharyay

Macalester College

INTRODUCTION

Contending with the formation of the Indian nation-state in 1947, Dalits—caste-marginalized individuals—across postcolonial India grappled with not only the remnants of colonial rule, but also their continued oppression by Brahmanical (dominant caste) hegemony. While the state navigated the opportunities and challenges of liberal democracy, Dalits were burdened with the limitations of formal equality and the persistence of interlocking hierarchies (Guru 2011). Following the calls of Dalit leaders, like Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s to “Educate, Agitate, Organize,” Dalits disseminate their transformative visions of substantive equality. From oral traditions and theatrical performances to print journalism and social media, Dalits engage in regionally specific, yet globally relevant activism (Paik 2022; Rao 2009; Slate 2012; Thakur 2020). Today, music accompanies Dalit protest—for instance, in demonstrations following Dalit student Rohith Vemula’s suicide (Dhanraj 2018). Furthermore, Dalit artists such as Sumeet Samos, Arivu, and Mahi Ghane have rearticulated their experiences of caste oppression through rap, evoking the racialized experiences of Black Americans and connecting their struggles (Jose and Yeldho 2023). Through their music, Dalits highlight regional issues alongside broader Dalit ideals (see Paik 2022).

In this article, I analyze the significance of lokgeeti (Bengali folk music) in the Bangla Dalit Literary Movement (BDLM), a contemporary Bengali Dalit activist movement that emerged in the 1970s. Within the BDLM, I investigate the compositions of singer-songwriter Smritikana Howlader (b. 1960). Inspired by the ideals found in Dalit literature and lokgeeti, Howlader began composing Dalit activist songs in 1990. As an early member of the movement and its primary organizing body, the Bangla Dalit Sahitya Sanstha (see “Bangla Dalit Sahitya Sanstha” 2021), Howlader and her work are well-recognized by Dalits around Kolkata, West Bengal. I observe how Howlader’s use of lokgeeti, which contributes to “collective structures of feeling” (Eyerman and Jamison, 1998), reveals the persistence of caste-based discrimination while narrativizing Dalit historiography. Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison (1998, 161) argue that these collective structures of feeling extend beyond the emotive, carrying “a truth-bearing significance” that can be oriented towards social movements. I ask how Howlader uses the truth-bearing significance of song to make caste more legible in West Bengal. Furthermore, music allows listeners to access collective memories while affirming marginalized identities (Eyerman and Jamison 1998; Jangam 2016; Jassal 2012). I explore how Howlader appropriates idioms of lokgeeti to reach a wider audience, indexing the collectivity found in Dalit orature. Specifically, I reflect on how the collective memories and historic narratives indexed by folk genres, as well as Howlader’s lyrics, create a counterhegemonic Dalit historiography that informs contemporary resistance and deconstruction of caste hierarchy.

METHODOLOGY AND POSITIONALITY

In the following sections, I frame my analysis through insight gained in interviews and fieldwork.[1] I conducted multiple interviews with Smritikana Howlader online and two field visits to Kolkata between 2022 and 2024. During these visits, I attended two events featuring the work of Howlader and other BDLM members. There, I interacted with musicians and audience members to better understand Howlader’s prominence and the role of music within literary programs. Building upon our interviews, my musico-poetic analyses demonstrate the significance of lokgeeti and the links between Howlader’s work and Dalit activist literature.

As the daughter of Bengali immigrants to the U.S. with non-Dalit backgrounds, my experience with caste differs greatly from Smritikana Howlader, members of the Bengali Dalit community, and more broadly, any Bengali living in India. My understanding of caste is shaped by my family’s caste background, affecting my exposure to Bengali culture. Experiencing geographical and cultural distance as an Indian American, I come to this research with the desire to foreground what can be heard and learned from marginalized community members. Through conversations with Howlader, BDLM authors, and event attendees, I have begun to understand the motivations behind Howlader’s music, alongside the profound emotional and political impact of her compositions. As such, I center Howlader’s compositional choices and other Dalit voices while challenging my notions of Bengali culture throughout this work.

APPROPRIATION OF SOUND AND CASTE-BASED LISTENING POSITIONALITY

Within urban West Bengal, contemporary musical ideologies are informed by colonial discourses and the sociocultural output of the Bengali bhadralok, the Hindu elite comprising dominant castes (Bandyopadhyay 2024; Roy 2015). The bhadralok reproduce derogatory orientalist and Eurocentric perspectives of folk music, a process Sharmadip Basu (2011) notes as “otherizing the popular” (327). However, much like jazz in the U.S., where the music of Black people are simultaneously appropriated and denigrated by white society (Austerlitz 2005), a dynamic of exclusion and appropriation can be observed in Bengal’s urban musical culture. In studying the production of Baul-Fakir (folk) music in contemporary West Bengal, for instance, Benjamin Krakauer (2015) shares how, by appropriating Baul-Fakir music, affluent Bengalis bolster a regional identity based on a romanticized Other, disempowering lower caste Baul-Fakir musicians.

The contradictions in the performance of folk music by upper caste musicians parallel caste’s erasure from dominant social spheres. West Bengal’s progressive politics and comparatively limited caste-based violence following independence left many believing that West Bengal had overcome its “caste problem” (Bandyopadhyay 2024). Following the establishment of the Left Front in postcolonial West Bengal, the Communist dialogue surrounding class sidelined caste discussions, leading to the false notion of West Bengal’s exceptionalism. Contending with the invisibilization of caste, West Bengal’s Dalit population has borne the burden of challenging derivatives of colonial discourse and bhadralok attitudes while legitimizing their experiences. When folk music is performed by upper caste individuals, lower caste agency is removed, reinforcing colonial and bhadralok hegemony. This relates to Dylan Robinson’s description of hungry listening and critical listening positionality (Robinson 2020). Acknowledging how dominant forms of listening—extending to colonial and bhadralok forms—distort the discourse surrounding non-dominant musical practices and ontologies, Robinson’s framework of critical listening positionality is applicable within the context of caste. In West Bengal, engaging a critical listening positionality requires us to interrogate dominant caste appropriations and evaluations of lower caste or Dalit-performed folk music, and enables us to better see how caste structures musicking.

SONG ANALYSES

Here I focus on two of Howlader’s songs, analyzing how she uncovers caste’s presence in Bengali society. I evaluate how Howlader voices a counterhegemonic Dalit historiography and demands caste annihilation (see Ambedkar [1936] 2014) through relying upon lokgeeti. Having grown up surrounded by lokgeeti, Howlader draws on familiar melodic themes and rhythmic cycles, contributing to “collective structures of feeling” (Eyerman and Jamison 1998). Songs like “Sindhu Nader Pare,” a bhatiali-based folk song, exemplify this quality. In bhatiali songs, boatmen from river-residing communities in the Bengal delta share their life struggles candidly, the pace and emotion of their music emulating the ebb and flow of the water surrounding them (Ray 1973).

When asked why she chooses to sing in folk styles, Howlader shared the following:

There is a reason why I emphasize folk songs…A greater number of people in this country belong to the land, and they hold and carry the ideas of the whole country. They hold these folk tunes deep in their minds as they move on in their lives. For that reason, if their hearts become full of consciousness,…the entire country will progress. (S. Howlader, pers. comm., August 2023, translation from Bengali by author).

From coded expressions to more outwardly social themes, folk genres are often linked to the everyday experiences of lower caste communities. Zoe C. Sherinian (2014) identifies this in a case study of Tamil Nadu’s Christian Dalit population, focusing on Reverend J. Theophilus Appavoo’s efforts to reclaim folk music. Appavoo describes folk music as “economically and socially accessible, drawn on community skills, participatory, potentially re-creative, treated as un-authored, and orally learned” (Appavoo 1986, 8–22 cited in Sherinian 2014, 45). Smita Tewari Jassal (2012, 2) refers to this as “[marginalized groups’] own scripts of reference,” differing from dominant musical practices. Folk music’s accessibility to a broader public, particularly marginalized populations, allows for non-dominant forms of social communication through song. Howlader harnesses the affective nature of lokgeeti, building upon familiarity to articulate her resistance.

“Sindhu Nader Pare”: Persistence through Political Shifts

In the song “Sindhu Nader Pare,” Howlader invokes elements from bhatiali to trace the historic migrations and narratives of colonization in South Asia (Howlader and Ghosh 2017). The song evokes the imagery of a peaceful, casteless past of communities near the Indus River prior to these migrations. Echoing the tonality and pacing of bhatiali songs, Howlader illustrates the transition from an idealized version of society without difference to one where caste implicates everyone. Howlader ascribes a particular mournful tone to the song in order to highlight the loss of this society. At the same time, she foreshadows the prominence of caste, alluding to its centrality to Bengali identity.

In the first stanza, Howlader introduces an idyllic scene near the Indus River, sharing:

Sindhu nodir pare jokhon chilo bosoti

Chilona dwanda chilona bhedabhed

Chilona dwanda chilona bhedabhed

Chilona kono nichu jati

The first line, known as sthayi in North Indian music, returns between stanzas, reinforcing the nostalgia for a lost past. The Harappan civilization, to which Howlader alludes, resided by the Indus River and “[remained] largely at peace” between 3000–1500 BCE (Blackwell 2004, 14). Through the repeated use of negation, Howlader anticipates the emergence of an all-encompassing caste order. Howlader continues, describing the populations that migrated or colonized the same area:

Bholgar teer chere eshe

Aryagoshti holo jara…

Gangapare khullo posora…

Shok elo Hun elo

Elo Mughal, Pathan

Engrejra jabar sathe

Desh holo je dukhan

Bornoshoshan ghuchlo na aar…

Thar upore buke khorgo

Deshbhager jala

In these stanzas, Howlader recounts the various dynasties and periods of rule from 1500 BCE to the present. In between each stanza, Howlader refers back to the Harappan civilization by repeating the sthayi. In doing so, Howlader laments how caste has persisted and been redefined through this historical arc. Further, she pushes the audience to reckon with the realities of caste and Brahmanism in the present.

Howlader additionally cites the Partition of South Asia in 1947, describing it as “the ax on one’s heart.” Partha Chatterjee (2015, 83) identifies how Partition impacted caste politics through “its ramifications on migration, urbanization, the re-established social dominance of the urban upper-caste Hindu elite, and the new ideological formations.” As Bengal itself was split during Partition, Howlader attempts to connect the losses experienced by all Bengalis during Partition with the burden of caste. By invoking connections between seemingly disparate communities, Howlader directs listeners to a common loss, centering the ongoing impacts of caste hierarchy upon all Bengalis.

“Antor diye protibad”: A Protest from the Heart

In the song “Fanshir Dari,” Howlader creates space for Dalit reflection while connecting contemporary and historical caste violence (Howlader 2022). Once again, she builds upon lokgeeti to center experiences of the Bengali Dalit community. Rooted in emotions of grief and anger, Howlader commemorates the life of Dalit-Adivasi student Chuni Kotal (1965–1992), of the Lodha Sabar community. Chuni Kotal committed suicide in August 1992 after experiencing intense caste discrimination at her university, Vidyasagar University, and workplace in Midnapore, West Bengal. Her tragic death brought the Bengali Dalit community together in protest, for which Howlader wrote the song. The haunting melody evokes the community’s grief, linking the loss of Kotal’s life with Dalit calls to action.

Influenced by lokgeeti, Howlader foregrounds the humanity of Kotal through the imagery of a flower that fails to bloom.

Gacher dori golay pori

Bono phool se je okale porilo jhori

Sei holo Chuni Bala

This metaphor allows audience members to reckon with Kotal’s untimely and tragic death. Howlader develops the flower imagery through shaking her voice on the word “jhori,” representing the falling of petals. Howlader’s choice of a flower is quite intentional:

Girls’ beauty is usually placed in comparison with flowers. Since Chuni resided in the forest, flowers such as roses, hibiscus, and jasmine are hard to find, but flowers such as datura, bhatphool, and bonophool [wildflowers] are common…[Further,] flowers that are not used in worship are outcasted. (S. Howlader, pers. comm., August 2023, translation from Bengali by author)

Howlader imparts beauty and value upon Kotal by representing her life as a wildflower, mirroring the outcasted existence of Dalits in direct contrast to dominant caste aesthetics. This detail is emblematic of Howlader’s desire to foreground and elevate symbols important to Dalits. Howlader’s vivid imagery subtly indexes Dalit aesthetics within the context of loss and disillusionment.

Later, Howlader references two characters found in ancient Sanskrit epics—Sambuka from the Ramayana (see Shastri 1959) and Ekalavya from the Mahabharata (see Menon 2004)—to contextualize Kotal’s death against instances of violence towards Dalits in Brahmanical texts. Coming from lower caste and Dalit backgrounds, both Sambuka and Ekalavya are portrayed as having transgressed caste boundaries, facing violent punishments as a result of doing so. In Brahmanical narratives, their portrayal serves a didactic role, emphasizing the importance of adhering to caste norms. In this stanza, Howlader challenges dominant representations of Sambuka and Ekalavya, re-ascribing them with honor. Further, in connecting these figures with Kotal, Howlader places Kotal’s death into a history of caste discrimination and violence, crossing temporal and narrative boundaries.

Sambuk ar Ekalavya byatha

Khoniker tare bhulechhilam sobai

Mone kore dilo se byatha

Falguni nithur kasai

By relating Sambuka and Ekalavya’s struggles to Kotal’s, Howlader enables the audience to venerate Kotal, while framing Falguni Chakraborty—a professor and one of the primary perpetrators of the discrimination against Kotal (Devi 1992)—as equivalent to those who wronged Sambuka and Ekalavya. Howlader describes “the pain [being] reminded by” the death of Kotal, eliciting emotions of pain in audience members that in turn emboldens Dalit resistance. Further, in referencing how Kotal was failed by the institutions around her, Howlader alludes to the erasure of caste in West Bengal’s postcolonial politics.

CONCLUSION

In the context of West Bengal’s supposedly “casteless” environment, this analysis demonstrates how contemporary anti-caste lokgeeti makes caste legible in Bengali society. Specifically, through the case study of Howlader’s music, I have shown how contemporary Dalit protest through song is asserted as a counterhegemonic historiography. Building upon Robinson’s (2020) work on dominant forms of listening, I suggest that caste structures aspects of musicking and listening. Through engaging a critical listening positionality, Dalit and non-Dalit members alike can begin to listen to Howlader’s music as one subverting caste hierarchy and forwarding a Dalit historiography.

I have also demonstrated how Howlader’s work exemplifies what Eyerman and Jamison (1998) call music’s ability to contribute to “collective structures of feeling.” The affective power of communicating knowledge through song, as in “Sindhu Nader Pare” and “Fanshir Dari,” allows Howlader to foster Dalit consciousness, reflecting on the past to orient listeners towards a contemporary resistance. Further, her performances create space for connecting and creating new Dalit knowledge. Howlader’s compositions, grounded in Dalit ontology, illustrate how anti-caste folk music sung by Dalit musicians becomes a rearticulation of collective musical practices. Ultimately, Dalit folk music, like Howlader’s music, reveals the insidious nature of caste hierarchy in a “caste-exceptional” state while narrativizing Dalit historiography.

Notes:

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