A grandpa who turned people into goats and other stories: How Assam’s ‘black magic’ village is working to break old taboos

Mayong, a region in Central Assam’s Morigaon district, has long been associated with mysticism and ‘magic’ practices, including ‘magical healing’ and folk medicine. The region is an amalgam of its residents, neighbours and influences, including Nath-Yogis, Tantrism, Vaishanavim, tribal Tiwas and Karbi, and more recently Nepalis and Bengali-Muslims. The region has long had a reputation of being a cradle of ‘black magic’ that locals insist — and emphasise — is “no longer practised” there.

Phani Bhushan Nath, the former principal of Mayang Anchalik College, one of the academics who delivered lectures on magical tradition at the festival, recalled an experience from around three decades ago. “I was travelling from Madras (now Chennai) to Guwahati. There were two families from Nalbari (another district in Assam) in my compartment. During our introductions, they discovered that I was from Mayong… After dinner, I retired to my berth and assuming that I was asleep, the patriarch of the families told the girls, ‘He is from Mayong. Be careful and don’t talk to him.’ I felt really hurt that day because that was the idea of Mayong among the people, even among the Assamese people.”

Bishnu Nath holding a puthi written by his grandfather. Sukrita Baruah

Sitting at the festival with his family’s mantra puthi (manuscript) was Bishnu Nath. The handwritten words in the puthi, written by his grandfather, are fading, but the pages are bound in a fresh hardcover. This, he said, was done a couple of years ago by Utpal Nath, a teacher at the college who is one of the locals from Mayong working towards making the region a “living museum of traditional magic”.

Over the years, Mayong residents have been working to preserve the cultural artefacts of the region’s tradition of ‘magic’, beginning with a small museum in a rented house that has now grown with support from the Assam chapter of INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage). The museum’s collection now includes 60 mantra puthis from the 13th to the 19th century, written on traditional material like the xasi pat (parchment made of the bark of the agar tree) in Kaitheli and Brajavali scripts that are no longer in use. That is how manuscripts like Bishnu Nath’s, which are still in their homes, have been catalogued and preserved. While the preservation of artefacts is an ongoing effort, the idea of a ‘magic festival’ in Mayong was floated both to boost tourism and take the cultural preservation efforts forward.

Utpal Nath, who has been among those leading the effort of cultural preservation, says, “If a historical tradition of knowledge on the basis of which Assam was built and a civilization was born can be preserved in a living form somewhere, rather than in a museum, it will be a centre of attraction for the entire world. This is an endeavour that us locals have been working on for a long time. Our District Commissioner (DC) had the idea to have a big festival here, centred on tourism. The village is a living museum in the field of magic tradition.”

Stating that the administration does not aim to “promote superstition”, Morigaon DC Devashish Sharma says it hopes to create new opportunities for tourism instead and to “keep Mayong’s magical heritage alive”. While the day was dedicated to an exhibition and lectures on Mayong’s traditions and meeting the bezes, the festival was capped off in the evening with a different kind of magic display: a stage magic show. The district administration hopes to expand the one-day festival into a week-long affair, drawing magicians from across the country to build Mayong as a tourist destination.

Locals say the manuscripts and traditional knowledge have historically been passed on from generation to generation. Debeshwar Nath, who says that he is around 70, says he began practising around 20 years ago and that he learnt the art from his father. Saying that his great-grandfather was a famous bez known as Jatadhari Bez, Debeshwar says his sons — one works with a private company and the other is active in student politics — are uninterested in the tradition.

Debeshwar Nath stands in front of a photo of his late father Shachindra Nath, who was also a bez (magic practitioner). Sukrita Baruah

“For now, I am practising it alone. I hope to get a good candidate to pass on my knowledge before I die,” he adds.

While most bezes at the college on Sunday were elderly, there was also Xurobh Nath, 34, who completed his BA from the college in 2013. Stating that his grandfather was “very powerful”, he claims, “He could turn people into goats.”

Xurobh says he was taught by his uncle before he died a few years back. He says, “We have mantra puthis written by our ancestors at home. Since I don’t know the script but still wanted to carry the tradition forward, he (my uncle) taught me orally.”

Magic practitioner Xurobh Nath, who completed his BA from Mayang Anchalik College in 2013. Sukrita Baruah

Now, Xurobh says, he stays home on Tuesdays and Saturday for visitors seeking him out, while working on his business of making bamboo structures on other days of the week.

Utpal Nath says he has grappled with the question of why ‘tantra-mantra’ should be preserved at all. “It is already dying out but there is a section of practitioners who are still alive today. They continue to practise this tradition in the same way we practise Bihu and lokogeet (folk singing) — as a tradition…We are not superstitious people, we are progressive minded. However, our forefathers raised us in a particular tradition and we want to keep that existent in a living form,” he says.