The bhakti bridge

Last week8217;s festival saw communities such as the Bodos, Mishings, Sonowal-Kacharis, Nepalis and tea tribes perform a bhawona each.

8216;8216;Sankaradeva8217;s idea was not just to make religious worship easier and comprehensible for the common man. He also had an eye on the various ethnic groups who lived in the Valley that was divided into several kingdoms, and worked for a solution to bring all of them under one umbrella,8217;8217; says Dr Pradip Jyoti Mahanta, who teaches literature and folklore in Guwahati University.

Bhawona, in fact, is a unique dramatic form that is a combination of art, music, performance, dance, singing and teachings from religious scriptures.

Conceived by the Asom Satra Mahasabha, the apex body of over 500 vaishnavite satras monasteries that followed the path shown by Sankaradeva, the bhawona festival was also called Setubandha8212;building bridges. Bhadrakrishna Goswami, president of the festival organising committee, says it was an attempt to repair the torn social fabric of the state.

8216;8216;The Assamese society must realise that we have deviated quite a lot from the path shown by Sankaradeva 600 years ago. For this the society has already paid heavily with the different ethnic groups moving away from one another resulting in social disunity and chaos,8217;8217; says Goswami, a satradhikar or head of a satra.

The initiative has brought about some changes. Says Lakshmi Kanta Mahanta, former secretary of the Satra Mahasabha: 8216;8216;In the recent past the Bodos were up in arms against the Assamese. But when we took the concept of bhawona to different Bodo villages, we found that the Bodo tribals were only too keen to take part in it.8217;8217;

A team of trainers then spent about a fortnight in a Bodo village and the village was enthusiastic over the idea of staging a play.

8216;8216;In a tea garden at Rajabari in Upper Assam, the tea labourers of Chotanagpur origin not only vied with each other to get roles in the bhawona, but even decided to give up liquor till the final rehearsal was completed,8217;8217; adds Narayan Chandra Goswami, a satradhikar, who is also the president of the Mahasabha.

As an art form too, the bhowans have attracted much attention. The performances still use the scripts that were written by Sankaradeva. The language it uses is medieval Assamese with a sprinkling of brajavali. The themes are episodes mostly from the Mahabharata though a couple of them also draw on the Ramayana.

8216;8216;But the most wonderful aspect is that Sankaradeva had integrated a lot of elements that he picked up from various ethnic groups of the Brahmaputra Valley. That was enough to bring about an emotional integration and set a tradition that was on the verge of losing its relevance and utility,8217;8217; says Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta, an IPS officer, who also belongs to a satra, and is managing trustee of Srimanta Foundation8212;a cultural body dedicated to development and propagation of satriya art and culture. For Assam, the festival was a real achievement, especially at a time when successive governments have failed to restore social and communal harmony.

Encouraged by the success of the festival, the Asom Satra Mahasabha and Srimanta Foundation are now planning to make this an annual event.