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 * //Baresahariya Bhaona //****: Community Drama Festival of Assam: A Living Tradition **. Madan M. Sarma and Parasmoni Dutta. __Asian Theatre Journal__, Fall 2009. 26.2.303-319

This article features a performance festival in northeastern India that has survived over two centuries. The authors focus on the way the Assamese city Jamuguri, where the //baresahariya bhaona// takes place every five to seven years, adapts to modernize some aspects of the festival while retaining other traditional practices. Sarma and Dutta vividly describe types of performance in the //bhaona//, supported by various photographs, diagrams, and segments of commonly featured plays, but they also offer a brief background of the festival’s religious and political origins. Primarily the authors aim to demonstrate how despite the original purposes of the //baresahariya bhaona//, for its participants and spectators the “festival is a continuation of tradition and a renewal of cultural contact” (317).

Jamuguri first saw a //baresahariya bhaona// in the late eighteenth century (although that name was not applied until 1921) as a way for its new inhabitants to unify under their shared religious beliefs. A number of followers of Vaishnavism, which was a reform movement within Hinduism that scrapped hierarchal system in favor of a more accessible god, migrated to the area when civil unrest chased them from their homes in the south. The Vaishnava founder Sankaradeva used one-act drama as an essential tool to spread his ideas, and the performance style that resulted from his blend of song, dance, and common vernacular became //bhaona//. In order for the uprooted Assamese to cope with their change in location, they organized the festival to express their devotion to their faith and ally the numerous villages surrounding Jamuguri. Thus, //baresahariya bhaona// began.

The festival itself provides a place for each participating village to show off while working together cohesively for a single performance, which has in two centuries become more about spectacle than religion. Perhaps the most striking feature of the //baresahariya bhaona// is its performance space: a multifaceted theatre in the round in the shape of a blooming lotus with twenty or more petals, at the center of which rises a platform displaying the Bhagavata. The shape of the lotus harkens to the myth of Brahma’s birth, but Sarma and Dutta also mention that the round performance space could be inspired by the Mandela (a circle representing the balanced cosmos), the “golden ratio,” or simple necessity of creating a space where twenty plays perform simultaneously. In such a clearly religion-oriented space, worship would seem to be the primary goal for the festival, but most viewers attend this great //bhaona// for its entertainment value, which makes it stand out from the more common prayer hall //bhaona//. Each “petal” features performance from a different participating village, and every play aims to amaze its audience through spectacles like body puppets, masks, and music. Even though the plays focus on religious tales—in addition to the festival opening with ominous sacred drumming and ending in prayer—the //baresahariya bhaona// draws in modern audiences because of the performers’ showmanship.

Sarma and Dutta present Jamuguri as a small Indian town that openly embraces blending its performance tradition with modern ways, to an extent. //Baresahariya bhaona// performers now use modern technology like electric lights and microphones, they shorten their performances (so they no longer go all night), they can be of other faiths, and the actors are now more educated than the illiterate farmers who began the festival. However, the festival retained the materials and methods used to construct the performance space, only men are permitted to perform and must adhere to ritual fasting beforehand, and only older plays can be staged. This overlap of old and new draws in spectators ranging from agrarian Vaishnavite locals to Assamese urbanites, and it appeals to those interested in devotional theatre as well as dramatic flair.

This article points to the //baresahariya bhaona// in Jamuguri as an example of drama as a way to preserve traditions while bridging the past to modern ways. I agree with the authors that this remarkable performance festival effectively keeps its practitioners connected to their own history and beliefs while allowing freedom in adopting contemporary devices that benefit this popular //bhaona//. I think their article would appeal to anyone who fears a global culture white-washed by contemporary ways, because Jamuguri’s festival proves that local customs remain vibrant when they incorporate certain modern practices.