Introduction
Nationalism surges with a newfound rhetorical power. The nation is a strange entity to trace back to its origins and disparate disciplines have offered disparate answers on what creates and breaks nations. da Silva and Tehrani (2016) argue that academic inquiry into the origins of cultural diversity has suggested a correlational relationship among several languages, materialistic cultural traditions and societal structures to be rooted in common ancestral superstructures that go back millennia in the past. One such relationship delineates the role of folklore in arousing sentiments of nationalism. This paper attempts to delve into the question of whether there is indeed a state to be found specifically in Bezbaruah’s anthology of folktales, selected for their timelessness in the Assamese collective consciousness, as well as understanding whether a state could organically emerge from the forms of solidarity and kinship that folklore espouses as the sources of legitimate authority. Locating the state, and not the nation, in Bezbaruah’s Burhi Aair Xadhu then proves both fruitful and counter-productive for the same reasons that folklore has been a source of study on the origins of the nation-state but not a theory of the state. A realm of political anthropology thus has often revolved around tracing the origins of the nation in an anthropological sense. These questions then revolve around the issues of hierarchy, authority and legitimate power in a Weberian sense while tracing the nation in Herder’s volksgeist or the common national-cultural spirit from which the structure of the state evolves into a mechanistic solidarity based on politico-legal legitimacy, presupposing the idealisation of the state due to territorial integration as well as the intensification of nationalistic fervour (Weber, 1919; Hayes, 1925; Scheimer, 2014).
The question on the origin of the nation has sought separate answers from the realm of folklore studies, but the question on the origin of the state as a politico entity has nought but remained unanswered for a quartet of reasons. First, the nation as an imagined community is easier to locate in the collective psychosis of nationalism that arises from folklore and folktales as a primary source of identification (Anderson, 1983; García-García, 2013). Second, the state as a definitional category remains fluid due to the contested nature of the academic discourse based on its origins even when the state is not especially difficult to define, ranging from the Hobbesian Leviathan to the Rousseauian social contract just within the liberal imagination (Kukathas, 2014). Third, there is an argument to be made that folklore itself is part of the conservative imagination of the nation-state as a tool for political consolidation in the state-building project, which uniquely indisposes it as a focal point of contention in a broader theory of the origin of the state (Hobsbawn and Ranger, 1983; Abrahams, 1993). Additionally, the argument that folklore promotes a conservative vision of the state is further strengthened by the view that the projection of a pre-national unity in the das volk or common culture of the people is charged with an authoritarian leaning because it is an essentially organic form of social solidarity, from which the mechanistic state derives its own legitimacy and authority by rooting it in a past that solidifies the state’s centrality (Duarra, 1995).
However, by no means is folklore a limited repository of knowledge to trace the origins of the state. Bascom (1965) located four essential functions of folklore – informally teaching cultural attitudes, escaping accepted limitations of culture, maintaining cultural identity and validating cultural norms that help us locate folklore within functionalism (Sims and Stephens, 2011). Herder saw the world around him divided into nations marked by “languages, inclinations and characters” in the form of differences that appeared almost paradoxical (Hayes, 1927) but nonetheless it functions as a crucial parameter in demarcating the borders of the state across the permeability of time. In Herder’s perspective, one of the most fundamental properties of the nation was that it was opposed to the state in terms of its expansionism (Bergh, 2018). Nations would be content with their borders and ways of life, while states would not. This line of thought on statehood is almost proto-Kantian, in the sense that republican states tend more towards pacifism than other forms of government (Kant, 1795). A folk state built on volksgeist, derived from the das volk of the common people, would thus not be expansionist in that they are state-nations and not nation-states.
Methodology
For the purpose of this paper, five folktales have been selected for intratextual and literary analysis based on purposive sampling. The sampling method has been selected as the researcher uses their positionality as a member of the Assamese community to analyse the themes of nationalism and statehood within the selected folktales from the cultural set of which they are a part. The perspective and linguistic knowledge of the researcher forms a bulk of the methodology employed in literary analysis since they are proficient in the prerequisite nuances and contexts of the selected language. A hermeneutic approach will be adopted to delve into the textual nuances and symbolic representations of the state within the selected folktales. The intratextual analysis will focus on identifying recurring themes, motifs and archetypal figures related to state power, authority and justice within the Burhi Aair Xadhu. Discourse analysis will be employed to examine the ways in which the state is constructed and contested through language and narratives. This will involve analysing the discursive strategies used to legitimise or challenge state authority in Bezbaruah’s conceptualisation of identity, modernity and statehood.
Two hypotheses, to be tested qualitatively on the basis of the intratextual discursive and hermeneutic analysis, will be compared for the validity of the research. Both hypotheses are to be treated equally valid until the conclusive end of the intratextual analysis, where they will be weighed against one another subject to the limitations of the research design. The null hypothesis (H0) and the alternate hypothesis (H1) have been constructed as follows:
H0 – There is no positive correlation between the conception of statehood in Burhi Aair Xadhu and folklorist nationalism.
H1 – There exists a positive correlation between the conception of statehood in Burhi Aair Xadhu and folklorist nationalism.
The selected criteria for statehood are marked given the applicability of the existing literature on the research area as well as the development of a correlation matrix. The matrix is developed in consultation with the V-Dem Dataset for the Democracy Report 2024, from which attributes are borrowed to study levels of democratisation and authoritarianism on a binary scale. The matrix further borrows from Freedom House’s dataset and methodological scaling to rate the occurrence of a particular motif in the selected stories, on a scale of 1 to 4 with 1 denoting least median occurrence and 4 denoting maximum median occurrence of the motif.
Five criteria based on the literature review have been identified and correlated with each frequency of occurrence in the five selected folktales. Along with the conventional literature analysis, the stories are subjected to quantitative motif analysis based on these five criteria –
right to self-determination
autonomous decision-making
degree of opposition
legitimate authority
ideas of justice
The criteria – based on subjective review and simplification of V-Dem and Freedom House datasets and indices – are then quantified. The scoring system has been tabulated and presented for study as follows
Criteria for Statehood – Locating Parameters in Folklore
The state is conventionally defined as a community which consists of a territory and a population subjected to an organized political authority, characterised by the practice of effective sovereignty based on the acquisition of an independent legal status when the criteria for statehood are met (Naticchia, 1961; Okosa, 2018). Wong (2013) argues that sovereignty and independence are understood as the government of the state being the final authority within its borders and jurisdiction without prejudice to its exercise subject to other states, and occupies de jure an equal footing with other states. Central to the practice of statehood is thus the threshold of sovereignty as a determining factor in the conceptualisation and actualisation of statehood itself. A state without sovereignty is a state wherein social life is impossible and constitutional independence is compromised (Gamble, 1963; Alan, 1986).
Fiore (1890) defined the state as an association of a considerable number of men living within a definite territory, constituted in fact as a political society and subject to the supreme authority of a sovereign, who has the power, ability and means to maintain the political organization of the association, with the assistance of the law, and to regulate and protect the rights of the members, to conduct relations with other states and to assume responsibility for its acts. Already we see the parameters of traditional statehood in accordance with the Montevideo Convention of 1933, which lays out four definite criteria that must be met in order for an international entity to be considered as a legitimate state – population, territory, government and sovereignty. A generous amount of literature, expressing a wide array of views, addresses statehood. Weber’s famous articulation of the state as a body that claims a monopoly of legitimate violence within a particular territory is especially crucial here, given that modes of structured violence form a bulk of the literary analysis in Burhi Aair Xadhu vis-a-vis the conception of sovereignty and agency (Weber, 1919).
Having identified exclusivity as the fundamental principle of sovereignty, Bodin (1583) laid out eight exclusive rights of sovereignty – the power to establish and revoke laws, the power to declare war and peace, the ability to create offices and appoint offices, the judicial authority for final appeals, the power to grant pardons, the right to mint currency, the authority to regulate weights and measures and the power to impose taxes. This legal-rational conceptualisation of sovereignty (Weber, 1919) points us towards the mechanisms and formalisations through which the state emerges, although categorically there is no one universal theory of state formation (Kradin, 2009). The integrative state and the disintegrative state both require a body of socio-politically relevant literature to draw legitimacy from in the way that the imagined community of the nation-state needs a common pool of sovereignty to draw legitimate authority from. A state without the exercise of folklore is thus a state in futility. Krasner (1999) lends credence to this argument by defining sovereignty itself as the highest power to which all subordinates in a hierarchical relationship accrue compliance. Folklore provides two essential functions here – in terms of morality and amusement – by delineating the moral borders of a community across time, becoming even more important to the conservationist than the history of a great war (Bezbaruah, 1911). Anderson (1991) made the argument that in spite of extra-linguistic characteristics, nationalism of the creole model lent itself its own legitimacy from the confluence of a sovereign imagined community and the existence of that imaginary connection between the members of a nation where state sovereignty is fully, flatly and evenly operative over each square centimetre of legally demarcated territory. This notion of operative sovereignty is what this paper will use to distinguish between nation-states and state-nations, while trying to read the latter into the Burhi Aair Xadhu for discursive analysis.
Deka (2011) invokes the concept of a “history from below” to argue for the broadening of social history in the political study of communities, referencing the works of Marx and Thompson as to how the focus of political history has shifted from kings and fiefdoms to “new” markers of identities that allow us to fill in the gaps left in political documentation wherein some group identities are marginalised and invisibilised. Foucault characterised discourse as a set of "true" statements that are not inherently real but are formed through discourse itself (Deleuze, 2006). These statements, whether written or spoken, play a role in building knowledge and discourses that influence societal structures (Foucault, 1970). In the regulation of discourse, there is a focus upon highlighting the power dynamics in language that shape communication and the creation of truth claims. Bhattacharjee (2003) cautions in the overuse of folklore as a historical source, arguing that while discourse construction is a fundamental property of folklore it should only be used as a source when the traditional material is either scanty or absent.
Literature Review
Anderson (1991) invokes the example of the national imagination at work in the making of a lone hero through a sociological landscape of fixity that is at the confluence of the imaginative with the real. Such a notion is particularly important in the comparative drawn between the body as a metaphor for dismemberment in both Tejimola and Tula aru Teja. Choudhury (2021) explores the dismemberment metaphor in Tejimola to the extent of how the grotesque is aestheticised and represented in the expression of the feminine collective and how death does not necessarily signal the end of agency but rather represents a larger agential motif in the metamorphosising reincarnations of the flesh. The argument that death breaks the bodily constraints of the feminine has larger implications when Tejimola is juxtaposed against the political history of Assam and the larger operative frameworks of nationalism under which Bezbaruah first collected his anthology of folktales. This exploration of the politics of the body and political martyrdom will be explored in much detail in the selected folktales as being representative of the larger political fragmentations, reorganisations and alienations felt by the Assamese state-nation within the Indian nation-state.
Sardar (2021) explored the myriad different ways in which the nationalist consciousness expresses itself specifically in the Burhi Aair Xadhu. He notes that Bezbaruah employed satire to critique the religious shortcomings and detrimental customs prevalent in the isolated Assamese community through various narratives. In Sarabjan, the character Foring serves as a vehicle for Bezbaruah to highlight societal biases such as fortune-telling. Lotkon presents Makhi, who exploits his high caste status to secure a life of ease. Burhi Aair Xadhu illustrates the agricultural lifestyle and social dynamics of rural areas all while featuring vivid characters such as an elderly couple tending to edible arum, Champawati safeguarding her rice field and a frog engaged in plowing. This collection also reflects the economic landscape of ancient Assam, showcasing a range of class-representative figures including the king, merchants, entrepreneurs, farmers, cowherds and beggars. The tales offer insights into modern Assamese society, often critically addressing issues such as polygamy, the neglect of girls, rivalries among concubines, the harsh treatment by stepmothers, marriage customs, religious events, festival observances and the roles of women in terms of attire, jewelry and domestic responsibilities.
However, as mentioned previously, previous literature on the topic has not yet tried to specifically read a kind of state into the Burhi Aair Xadhu nor any of Bezbaruah’s other works. Ahmed and Borthakur (2023) note that the lack of a clear political ideology in Bezbaruah makes his position on politics rather ambivalent and ambiguous, but there is nonetheless a repository of information – albeit contradictory at times – on the vision he had of society and politics in an idealised, independent Assam. In an article appearing in Jonaki edited by Chandrakumar Agarwala in 1890, Bezbaruah is said to have written:
“Politics is beyond our domain. In this dependent country, we have to concentrate on prajaniti [people’s policy]. Literature, science, society, etc. are our issues for discussion – we are coming to fight against darkness. The aim is… development of the country ‘Jonak’ [moonlight].”
It is precisely this niche that this paper attempts to fill when delving into what kind of state the Burhi Aair Xadhu envisioned, and in doing so transforms a socially reformist view into a politically revolutionary one. It is the literary revolution – and evolution – of the Assamese state, and thereby the larger Indian state, that this paper attempts to trace.
Translations and Summaries
Tejimola narrates the tale of a woman's jealousy towards another feminine figure. The stepmother, feeling threatened about her status within the home, seeks to eliminate her stepdaughter by assaulting her with a rice grinder – known as dheki. Tejimola metamorphosises four times, first as a gourd plant, then as a citrus tree, a lotus flower and a mynah bird. Throughout each metamorphosis her sense of self-identity is preserved in the haunting lyrics: I am Tejimola. At the end, her father is the medium through which Tejimola returns to personhood by feeding upon his half-eaten spit of areca nut. Notably, the kitchen serves as a setting for violence instigated by women; it is within this space that a woman's autonomy in decision-making, her skills, her social interactions and the denouement of the story are all situated (Barua, 2020).
The story of Tula aru Teja starts with a rich farmer who has two wives—Laagi and Elaagi. Laagi is the favoured wife with a daughter named Tula; Elaagi, the alienated wife, has a son and a daughter Kanai and Teja. Out of jealousy, Laagi first turns Elaagi into a turtle and later has her killed. Two trees bearing fruits and flowers grow on her burial spot. One day, a king comes to that spot attracted by the fruits and flowers where he sees Teja and agrees to marry her when she becomes an adult. Years later, Teja is married off to the king as his second wife, and she takes Kanai along with her to the palace. Laagi is very angry at Teja’s good fortune. She calls her back home and turns her into a sparrow. She then disguises Tula as Teja and sends her to the palace as the new queen. The sparrow follows them to the palace and after many attempts is able to tell the king all that has happened. The king then kills Tula and sends her meat to her parents as a gift. Unknowingly, the parents eat the meat at night and discover the horrifying truth the next morning (Barua, 2020).
The Tale of the Cat’s Daughter begins with an act of deprivation – the lady of the house commands the cat to hunt fish for her and alienates her from the reward of her labour. Dismayed, the cat curses the lady to have whatever she has in her pregnant belly and vice versa. The story follows the miraculous birth of cat-daughters and human-cats by the cat and the lady respectively. One day, the cat passes away and the two daughters go out in search of their mother where they stumble upon a river-prince who kidnaps one of them. Through a series of whimsical events, one of the daughters secures a marriage to a merchant’s house where she is mistreated by her mother-in-law and the truth of the river-prince’s kidnapping is brought to the attention of the village.
Ou Kuwori begins as such – a king had two queens; one gave birth to a son, while the other bore a peculiar fruit known as ou-tenga. The younger queen – distressed by her fruit offspring – discarded it, yet it persistently returned to her. One day, a prince witnessed a stunning maiden emerging from the fruit while bathing in a river. Captivated by her beauty, he desired to marry her despite his family's disapproval. Ultimately, the mother of the our-princess consented to the union. After the prince married the fruit, a girl appeared each night to consume his leftovers, leaving him bewildered. A beggar-woman disclosed the truth and provided guidance on how to uncover the girl's true identity. Following her advice, the prince rescued the girl from the flames, transforming her back into human form. The families celebrated the marriage with great joy and splendour.
The story of Gongatoup is fantastical and whimsical. In a lake, the fish convened at its deepest point to strategise against humans. Gongatoup, appointed to articulate their concerns, spoke of the cruelty exhibited by humans. He contended that humans, in their service to other creatures, displayed a lack of wisdom. Gongatoup proposed that the fish could easily overcome humans. However, he was unaware of certain vital insights and decided to summon his aunt, Gadgedee, who possessed significant knowledge. Sengeli was dispatched to extend the invitation, but she initially declined until Gongatoup lavished her with praise, which led to disorder among the fish. His pride culminated in a loud explosion, causing the fish to scatter and abruptly terminate the meeting.
Interpretation of Results
Each motif is counted separately for all five stories and then tabulated as
follows –
The correlation between each motif is tabulated as follows –
The correlation matrix between the five criteria reveals the following relationships –
Right to Self-Determination is highly correlated with Autonomous Decision-Making (0.82) and moderately with Degree of Opposition (0.70).
Autonomous Decision-Making has a strong correlation with Degree of Opposition (0.78) and a moderate correlation with Ideas of Justice (0.68).
Degree of Opposition is very strongly correlated with Ideas of Justice (0.97), indicating a high level of co-occurrence in the selected folktales.
Legitimate Authority shows moderate correlations with the other four motifs, with its highest frequency being with Degree of Opposition (0.83) and Ideas of Justice (0.69).
These correlations suggest that motifs related to self-determination, opposition and justice are commonly associated within the analysed folktales. Since there is no negative correlation, it implies that these motifs occur frequently alongside each other and reinforce key themes within the selected folktales. Some positive relationships are especially important, which are explored as follows –
Degree of Opposition and Ideas of Justice (0.97 correlation):
The exceptionally high correlation indicates that in these folktales, stories featuring resistance to authority frequently align with themes of justice. This observation further implies that acts of defiance or challenges to power are commonly depicted as morally and socially warranted, by which it mirrors a foundational value system within the narratives that associates justice with the critique of established authority. From an interpretive perspective, these tales highlight justice as a fundamental driving force behind dissent and political transformation.
Right to Self-Determination and Autonomous Decision-Making (0.82 correlation):
The significant correlation observed between these two elements indicates that characters or collectives possessing a sense of self-determination frequently partake in autonomous decision-making throughout the narratives. This association highlights a thematic link wherein the entitlement to chart one’s course is intricately connected to the ability to make independent choices, thereby emphasising the importance of individual or collective agency. These themes represent wider aspirations for liberty and agency within the cultural framework of these folktales.
Autonomous Decision-Making and Degree of Opposition (0.78 correlation):
The positive correlation between these two criteria suggests that making independent choices frequently is linked to challenging established norms or authority structures in the selected folktales. Characters that operate autonomously are often depicted as opposing prevailing systems, indicating that independence and resistance work hand-in-hand. This association highlights a cultural appreciation for the bravery found in autonomy, particularly when it confronts oppressive systems.
Degree of Opposition and Legitimate Authority (0.83 correlation):
The high correlation here indicates that narratives featuring conflict frequently tackle issues of authority and legitimacy. In these stories, acts of defiance or resistance are not merely acts of rebellion – they often arise as reactions to perceived illegitimacy or the misuse of power. This recurring theme serves as a cultural critique woven into the folktales and is especially pertinent in tales related to statehood as it underscores a complex understanding of power dynamics.
Literary and Discursive Analysis
The state that emerges in the selected folktales is emblematic of the problem with politicising the Burhi Aair Xadhu – the passivity of Bezbaruah’s own political vision. The state is both patriarchal and parochial, revolutionary and reactionary, oppressor and oppressed. The anthropological nature of power and opposition in the folktales delineates some level of positive correlation between authority and nationalism, as well as between justice and dissent. In all the folktales, the politics of the body becomes intrinsically linked to the politics of martyrdom and personhood. Murphy (2022) argued that political martyrdom consists of three crucial elements: unnatural death, consecration of that death by a collectivity and transmission of accounts of that death through the process of commemoration.
The martyrdom motif is strongest in Tejimola, which has long been pinned as part of the world-wide Cinderella cycle where the subjectivity of the victimised feminine does not die with death; instead she is agential through her own elegiac songs (Choudhury, 2021). The intersection of the grotesque with the aesthetic implies the rather omniscient presence of the disability motif throughout Tejimola, Ou-Kuwori and Tula aru Teja, such that the identity of the self lives on even after death in the botanical and zoological reincarnates of the flesh. In all five folktales, the archetypal figure of authority is a male – in Tejimola it is the father; in Tula aru Teja it is the king; in Ou-Kuwori it is the prince, in Mekurir Jiyekor Xadhu it is the river prince; and in Gongatoup it is the titular protagonist. Each story has its own peculiar “chronotrope” in Bakhtin’s terms, and animal tales tend to be political, portraying how the powerless and the cunning sidestep or outmanoeuvre the powerful (Ramanujan, 1997).
The meaning of the elements as well as the interpretation of the symbolism depends on what kind of tale it is, at which point the gender of the genre becomes pertinent as well. The gender of the chronologer becomes important, as he or she reads into the collected folktales a fundamental bias structured by the repeated social performance of gender (Butler, 1988). The political is not operative through 'objective' or 'unbiased' mechanisms; rather, it is influenced by specific cultural biases related to the pre-existing concepts of rights, citizenship and democracy that prioritise stability and predictability (Desai, 2015). In a similar vein, the body is perceived in various ways and serves as the subject of political conflicts rather than merely an object within them.
In Tejimola, the titular coming-of-age protagonist is constructed in opposition to the violent stepmother. It is noteworthy that the central conflict in the story only occurs once the paternalistic kinship figurehead is absent from the household. The absentee father motif reoccurs less prominently in Tula aru Teja, but it forms a central bulk of the plot in Tejimola. The father is constructed as the sole source of legitimate authority; it is because of his presence in the prologue of the story that the stepmother is restrained in her dislike and violence towards Tejimola. The state is essentially patriarchal when we locate the authority archetype in the father, wherein the assumption that women left to their own devices will result in a disordered state of anarchy finds credence in the violence that the stepmother inflicts upon Tejimola in his absence. So long as a male paternalistic authority guides the household, order is maintained and all is well. Yakubu (2020) writes that gendered folktales are an important source of socialisation for boys and girls into gendered roles and expectations, often because the storytelling of folktales plays a significant role in shaping children's perceptions of gender by instilling specific 'truths' about each sex that persist into adulthood. This early socialisation then impacts the beliefs, processes, systems and institutions that are subsequently established. The metamorphosis of Tejimola into botanical forms at the stepmother’s cruelty, and her final reincarnation into human form at her father’s intervention, signals a kind of state that is far more invested in policing women’s sexuality and bodily autonomy. The body becomes a site for political conflict as much as it does for reconciliation; it is the consumption of her father’s spit-laden nuts that transforms Tejimola back into personhood. The argument can be made that Tejimola’s death is emblematic of the political fragmentation and reorganisation of the state of Assam itself – the first pounding of the right hand symbolising Nagaland’s departure in 1963, the second pounding of the left hand representing Meghalaya, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh’s exits in 1972, the pounding of the legs showcasing Mizoram’s exit in 1987, while the pounding of the head represented the strife and discord of the Assam Movement and succeeding insurgency movements of both the pan-Assam and ethnonationalist varieties within Assam. Throughout each reorganisation and reincarnation, both Assam and Tejimola hold on to their core identity even when their form is reconfigured and changed to resemble an othered imagination. Tejimola becomes Assam, as much as a folktale compiled in 1911 can represent the history of a state with multiple political reorganisation.
In Tula aru Teja, the state is retributive and active in its pursuit of justice. The motifs of autonomy and authority are woven quite intricately into the narrative structure, with the archetypal figure of authority being located in the king. The absentee father forms a passive audience that witnesses the brutalisation of the siblings Kanai and Teja at the hands of his first wife. Justice is given a central position throughout the plot, especially in the retribution that follows Laagi in the form of cannibalising her own daughter, albeit unknowingly. The state that emerges in this narrative is violent and mechanistic – it follows its own sets of rules and laws on moral right and wrong. The state makes a promise to its people in the form of a social compact represented here in the form of the king’s pact to marry Teja once she comes of age, which further cements his authority as the policer of her sexuality. There is a minor conflict between the first queen and Teja for the affections of the king, wherein the queen plots to deny Teja’s entry into the palace by claiming her to be “cursed” and unfortunate. The state is violent in two particular instances – first, the transmutation of Teja and Kanaai’s mother into a turtle and the communal consumption of her flesh; and second, in the brutalisation of Tula as a form of revenge against her mother by unknowingly making her partake in the consumption of her daughter’s flesh. Cannibalism emerges here both as a source of distress as well as a medium of justice, challenging the dominant colonial discourse that cannibalism is emblematic of lesser civilised societies. Andrade (1969) ironically reappropriated cannibalism to subvert the image of the passive native as well as to intimate the general public with the metaphor of cannibalism. This image of cannibalism is further reinforced by the folktale’s usage of it as a form of justice, in the sense that the means justify the ends of how that justice is pursued to begin with.
Mekurir Jiyekor Xadhu (The Tale of the Cat’s Daughter) offers a whimsical insight into the state through the use of the concept of Marxist alienation. The first act of the story is itself an act of deprivation – the cat expends its labour to hunt fish for both herself and the lady of the house, only to be given the barebones of the fish while the lady feasted on the flesh. Dismayed by this cruelty, the cat curses her to have whatever she has in her pregnant belly and for her to have her children instead. The twins are emblematic of childhood innocence and purity, a motif that the river prince later exploits as the controller of women’s sexuality in this particular narrative. The merchant’s decision to marry the younger daughter as his third wife is a source of significant conflict, as his previous wives plot to murder her babies by floating them down the river. Luckily, their rescue by the river prince once again reinforces a male kinship figure as the sole source of legitimate authority within the narrative. The state that emerges here is also punitive, as seen in the brutal punishment meted out to the merchant’s wives when the conspiracy is exposed and their noses are chopped off by their husbands.
Ou-Kuwori is less about the state and more about kinship and power. This power is once again reflected in the way a male authority figure polices and controls women’s sexuality, most notably in the form of the prince who coerces the titular ou-princess to turn into a human through subterfuge and deceit. The tale is marked by a rejection of the grotesque feminine, as the mother refuses to acknowledge the ou-tenga (elephant apple) as her offspring even though it kept rolling back to her. The act of the prince noticing the beautiful maiden emerging from the ou-tenga is in itself an act of sexual control – he deems her worthy enough to be her wife and throws a fit when he is not allowed to marry her. Ramanujan (1991) links the “chronos” of “girl becoming tree (plant) becoming girl” to the control of women’s sexuality where the act of transmutation is as much as an act of sexualisation as it is about domination and power. The fact that her permanent fixation into an anthropomorphised form is almost ritualistic and sexualised itself, on the instruction of a fellow feminine figure albeit from a different class strata, speaks of a power dynamic between a gendered state and a genderless populace; the act of governance requires of its gendered constituents the patriarchal submission to the authority and leadership of men. The state that emerges here is almost parochial and counter-revolutionary, while still containing hints of the early nationalistic fervour of the 1910s that was still structurally gendered and misogynistic.
The story of Gongatoup is selected for analysis for a very specific reason: its portrayal of popular sovereignty exercised collectively by a body politic. The fish of the lake convene at the deepest spot to decide to wage a war against the fish-eating animals of the terra firma, already reflecting a notion of republicanism and government by consent that is emblematic of liberal conceptions of political organisation. This republicanism is further strengthened by the act of appointing a speaker of the assembly in the bald-headed goroi fish, who acts as a mediator and enabler to the convention of fish, while the swift sengeli fish is given the responsibility of the messenger. It is notable that the roles assigned to these fish are contextually cultural and specific to the perception of animals in common Assamese society, where the “baldness” of the goroi is seen as representative of old age and wisdom while the “swiftness” of the sengeli represents a near-Hermes or Narad deification of the messenger. This representation of sovereignty is almost as populist as it is popular – decisions of the collective will are what will, ostensibly, dictate the terms of the war with the land animals. Humanity is central to this story as the overarching antagonists, who the fish believe too stupid and subservient to mount an effective counter-attack against their offensive. The fish's collective decision-making process – akin to a direct democracy – is emblematic of the power of the people to shape their own destiny. The appointment of a speaker and a messenger echoes the principles of representative democracy with specific individuals tasked with carrying out the will of the many. The tale is also a cautionary tale against pride, hubris and authoritarianism; it is the pride that causes the explosion and subsequent death of the globe fish. Popular sovereignty vested in the power of the collective is a dangerous fire to tend to, especially combined with the vanity of power itself. The state that emerges here is both representative and vainglorious as it is self-centered; it cares only about forwarding its own collective interests to the detriment of the available information dataset.
Limitations of the Study
The conclusions reached in this paper are themselves inconclusive. While setting upon the gargantuan task of reading the Indian (and an Assamese) state into the Burhi Aair Xadhu, there was a frequent conflation of elements of nationalism with the mechanistic formal structure of political organisation found in statehood. The study was severely limited in its sampling and quantitative analysis methods. The lack of time that could reasonably be accorded to research, in part due to the researcher’s status as an undergraduate student, unavoidably affected the validity of the test results. A more concrete analysis of Bezbaruah’s anthology, containing either most or all of his folktales in the collection, could potentially yield better results and a plausible theory of the state within Assamese nationalism. The sampling method was further affected somewhat by selection bias, in which the five selected folktales were chosen specifically because they already had some elements of nationalism. Reasonable research with more or all the folktales in this collection could perhaps yield more conclusive answers towards the formulated research hypotheses.
Conclusion
Based on the findings in the motif analysis and correlation matrix, there is significant support for the alternative hypothesis that there exists a positive correlation between the conception of statehood in Burhi Aair Xadhu and folklorist nationalism. The folktales have all yielded high correlations between motifs of justice, authority, opposition and autonomy. This showcases that these themes frequently occur together and reinforce each other, aligning with the vision of statehood that resonates with the nationalist consciousness and social critique found in Assamese folklore.
The correlation between Degree of Opposition and Ideas of Justice (0.97) suggests that resistance to power is depicted as morally justified as a key attribute of a statist and evolutionary sentiment that challenges authority in favour of collective justice. The strong relationship between Right to Self-Determination and Autonomous Decision-Making (0.82) further reflects an emphasis on agency and liberty, core values in narratives that support a folklorist view of nationalism. The correlation between Degree of Opposition and Legitimate Authority (0.83) implies that authority is validated through opposition, which further reinforces a notion of a state accountable to its people. These correlations, combined with the motif analysis, affirm that Burhi Aair Xadhu embeds a nuanced conceptualisation of statehood intertwined with nationalist ideals. The state that emerges in the folktales is both paternalistic, patriarchal and authoritarian. Thus, the research is affirmatively supporting the alternative hypothesis.
The alternative hypothesis is further supported by the literary and discursive analysis that uses the researcher’s insights as well as drawing upon pre-existing literature to support the claims that there is a vision of statehood to be found in the Burhi Aair Xadhu. Hence, the null hypothesis stands rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted based on high correlation values between the motifs along with significant subjective insights on the nature of the state found within the stories.
By Syed Dareen Hannash
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