‘People like me don’t get to be gods’

The naamghar’s floor is dotted with clay lamps gently illuminating the mud floors, guiding the audience who have begun to trickle in. The gayan (singer) and bayan (drummer) line up: the drummer rests the khol, a traditional Assamese percussion instrument, against his chest; large brass cymbals (bor taal) wink in the warm light of the lamps as the musicians start to play.

The sutradhar, the narrator for the evening, begins to speak. The room falls silent. Bipul Das steps into the light.

And the night-long Bhaona – Assam’s traditional Vaishnavite religious theatre – is off to a vibrant, yet solemn start. The plays are mostly based on the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, and dramatise a single episode.

Bipul’s favourite role is that of Kunti, the mother of the Pandavas in the epic, Mahabharata. “In the village, people call me Kunti,” he says with a smile. Raised by a single mother, he says he feels an instinctive connection to motherhood. “I believe there is a mother inside me, which connects me to Kunti’s character.” He goes on to sing his favourite lines:

Bipul watched Bhaona performances as a child. “My village already had a strong Bhaona culture,” he says, and his neighbours in Kachu Gaon encouraged him to perform. “They recognised my potential, and they were very supportive of me. From acting to costumes to voice modulation, my village people are the only ones who have taught me the form,” he adds.

For his first role at the age of 15 – he draped a sari in shades of saffron and white and stepped onto the stage in the role of a goddess – Sita from the play ‘Sita Haran’ (Sita’s kidnapping).

Now, although almost two decades have gone by, when he speaks about that first day, his eyes light up with the happy memory: “I loved it. People appreciated my performance in the play.”

The Bhaona performer is speaking to this reporter at his home in Assam’s Lakhimpur district. The roughly 70 homes of his Kaibartta community (listed as Scheduled Caste in the state), stand at a distance from the neighbourhood of the dominant castes. Most families in his community survive on daily wage labour, a little farming, or small businesses.

“Due to my [lower caste] surname, I was cancelled from multiple Bhaonas at the last minute,” this Dalit performer tells PARI. “But our people are culturally rich, richer than them,” Bipul says with pride. “Amak teolokor nimantronor proyojon nai. Ami amar nijoswa naamghar aru sangskritik mancha gorhi tuliso. Ami swadhin [We don’t need their invitation anymore. We have built our own naamghar and cultural forum. We are independent].”

Earnings from Bhaona performances range between Rs. 1,000-1,500 and don’t always come in on time; Bipul often does it for free.

As jobs are scarce, this Dalit performer juggles many roles. The 33-year-old is a farmer during the day, working in the family’s three-acre land where he grows paddy for self-consumption and mustard for sale. In the evening, the Masters graduate in Assamese is a tutor. He teaches school students in his locality Hindi, Science and Mathematics. Nights are often spent knitting, the rhythmic click of wool threads against metal filling the quiet. “Right now, I’m making a sweater for myself,” he says, his fingers working through the loops. “But I want to start selling them too.”

Everything changes when the Bhaona season arrives. From puh to sot (December to March), Bipul becomes a performer. A storyteller. A woman.

Bhaona – the expression of bhav or emotion – is Assam’s traditional Vaishnavite religious theatre. Introduced in the 15th century by poet, saint, social reformer and scholar Srimanta Sankardeva, the teachings originally opposed Brahminical dominance. However, over time, Sankardev’s legacy lost its spirit of equality, and Daltis and tribals were, and continue to be, actively excluded.

The exclusion begins with the space for the performances – the village naamghar (prayer hall) is considered a sacred space where prayer and theatre occur side-by-side. But its function is not limited to religious activities. It is also used as a community hall where educational, political, cultural and other activities are discussed democratically. Ironically, its function has now shrunk to a narrow definition.

Historically, naamghars were upper-caste spaces, with caste hierarchies controlling access to both worship and theatre.

The earthen walls of the prayer hall, slightly stained with smoke from the burning of incense for many years, hold the echoes of years of past performances, imprinted on the walls over time. “Performances are very much linked with prayer halls. There is a deep connection, and Bhaona always happens in the naamghar. Nowhere else was it allowed,” says Kankan Mahanta, a member of the Madhusudan Sanskritik Bhaona troupe from Jorhat district. The Mahanta community has traditionally been associated with leading Vaishnavite sattras (cultural hubs) in Assam.

In Kankan’s village, Sipoha in Titabor block (Bogar Gaon is the official name), upper-caste Vaishnavites like the Goswamis and Mahantas, have for a long time been guardians of Bhaona. Kankan, an upper caste artist, believes Bhaona must remain enclosed within the naamghar, with men performing the roles of women as traditionally done, he says smiling at this reporter.

As dusk falls over Sipoha, the distant clanging of cymbals can be heard from the naamghar. Inside, men wearing flowing clothing rehearse their parts — their voices swelling in rhythm with the steady beat — maintaining a tradition shaped by faith and exclusion.

Diganta Taid is a Bhaona performer. A Mising tribal, he tells PARI that his ancestors were excluded from performances – they could neither watch Bhaona nor perform in it. His experience has not been very different: “When I perform, they remind me who I am,” the 29-year-old from Lakhimpur, Assam says. We are speaking in his home – a chang ghor — traditional bamboo house built on stilts on the banks of the Subansiri River. He lives here with his wife, three-year-old daughter and his parents.

The Mishing are an indigenous Tibeto-Burman ethnic group of Assam, living mainly along the Brahmaputra's fertile floodplains. Read: Making the Mising brew in Majuli

Diganta’s community now stage their own Bhaonas — in their own language. “We started doing Bhaona in Mising because we were tired of being pushed aside,” he says. “Why wait for their acceptance when we can create our own?” Diganta refuses any payment for his art; he does it for free.

Diganta teaches in a private school in the nearby village of Namoni Borkhamukh Gaon. He is also a farmer and manages the family-owned 20 acres on which paddy and mustard are cultivated. The farm brings in roughly Rs. one lakh rupees annually from cultivating mustard.

In the evenings, Diganta rehearses for Bhaona. His spoken Assamese carries the rhythms of his mother tongue, Mising — something that upper-caste performers never let him forget. “They mock my accent, my pronunciation. I have been given side roles because of it,” he told this reporter.

Even when he is cast in a role, there are unspoken rules. He can be Ravana or an asura (demon) — but never Krishna. Never Ram.

“People like me don’t get to be gods,” he says.

Satras of 16th century Assam were historically dominated by upper-caste Vaishnavite monks who practiced Bhaona, leading to the belief that the art’s divine roles demand caste Assamese – repeated often enough to pass as tradition. So Mising and other tribes have always been treated as outsiders.

As have women, who have also been traditionally excluded from Bhaona performances.

“They prefer boys who possess feminine characteristics to play female characters,” explains Bipul, who has faced ridicule despite being sought after for female roles. “If you observe their hypocrisy, they refer to us on stage as ‘devi’ [goddess], but off stage as ‘ladies’ and ‘hijra’ [eunuch],” he adds.

He says that no play demands more from him than Dakshya Jagya. In this emotionally intense drama he plays Sati, Shiva’s wife — a role that drains him each time. “It’s challenging because I have to cry, shout, and bring out so much emotion,” he says. “No matter how much I try, I am a man. To bring a female voice feels difficult, so I practice for months,” he adds.

The question of women performing in sacred naamghars, was and is out of the question, says Thaneswar Bora, a retired teacher in Lakhimpur. “Women aren’t permitted there, nor are lower castes,” adds the local historian of Vaishnavism.

Dr. Polly Vauquline, a professor in the Department of Women’s Studies, Guwahati University says that Vaishnavism has always been a male-centric religion in Assam. “Even in dance and plays, it was performed by men. The sect emerged during the medieval period to counter Brahmanism when women’s status was at its lowest. That structure remained.”

In Assam, men have always led religious activities, dances, and plays, while women had very little role to play. This male-dominated structure has stayed intact.

But Bhaona performer Kankan believes that “change is on the way. Bhaona has now moved to the stage, and women are also performing.”

Parishmita Kalita is one of the few women who have made it to the stage. A post graduate in English literature, the 26-year-old is seeking a government job. She spends her days moving between household chores at her home in Gorokhia Dol near Desaikash Bamun Gaon.

She folds a gamusa and places it on the shelf, dusting off a brass plate before heading to the kitchen. Her days are spent like this — moving between household chores, waiting for the next festival or wedding in her Kayastha community where she might get to step out.

Her family was initially reluctant when she told them about her desire to perform in Bhaona. “They agreed, but with conditions. A woman must look like a woman and act like one. Playing male roles is not permitted,” she told PARI.

Growing up in Jorhat district, she had never questioned why men played all the roles. That changed in 2017 when she watched an all-women Bhaona performing Daksha Jagya. “It was new,” she says, “I had never seen a Bhaona like that before, and somewhere deep inside I felt a strong desire to be there, to take part in it. Seeing it gave me the confidence that I could do it as well”

Long-standing Vaishnavite traditions in Assam hold rigid notions of gender and caste, and have traditionally determined who belongs on stage and who must stay in the shadows. But performers like Bipul, Digant and Parishmita are challenging that. Dalit, tribal, and women performers are thriving in spaces they were once excluded from, inhabiting each role and giving it life. There, they are present, visible, and part of something bigger than just a performance. They are part of a space that has long tried to exclude them.

Bipul considers the stage to be both a sanctuary and a battlefield. “I travel alone on this journey,” he says, and brushes off the taunts, exclusions, or last-minute cancellations. The costumes are packed, and the lines are memorised. If they call him, he will give them a queen, a goddess, a woman. If they don’t, he will return home, pick up his knitting needles, and begin another sweater.

“They laugh at me,” he says. “But they still come to watch.”

“And so, the play goes on.”