বাউল গানে বাঙালীর জাতীয়তাবাদ : মাটির সুর থেকে জাতির কন্ঠস্বর/ Nationalism in Baul Songs : From the Melody of the Voice of a Nation

Abstract

The formation of the Bengali’s distinct consciousness and sense of nationhood is not solely dominated by elite-determined articulation; in its deeper strata lies the uninterrupted, boundless and profound influence of the oral, unwritten literature of folk life. Indeed, Baul songs are an incomparable chronicle of that folk life. Resounding for centuries along Bengal’s fields, pathways and riverbanks, they were not merely a call for spiritual liberation, but simultaneously a quest for the Bengali’s love of the land, the search for freedom, the search for Bengal, and the search for Bengali-ness. In the present essay, the quest for Bengali collective identity, set against the backdrop of Rajendra sundar Trivedi and Rabindranath Tagore’s prayer ‘Banglar Mati Banglar Jol’, focuses on the narratives of specific Baul songs to explore the awakening of Bengali nationalism into its ‘grandest and most sublime consciousness’. We have observed that the Baul mystic poets, on the one hand, fearlessly and with resolute voice identified the nation’s self-destructive tendencies through self-criticism, and on the other hand, simultaneously crafted an unparalleled blueprint for the nation’s future on the foundation of the Bengali language, verdant nature, and a society free from exploitation. In opposition to formalistic religious practice, through self-inquiry they acknowledged an immense, boundless love for and indebtedness to the motherland. With a secular, liberal mentality, they transcended the narrow walls of artificial Hindu-Muslim division, offered the philosophy of ‘children of the same mother’, and instilled the death-conquering mantra of ‘if you want to live, live a life worth living’. The contention of this essay is that this life-affirming nationalism, nurtured and embodied in Baul philosophy—standing upon the four pillars of land, language, humanity and secularism—prepared the public psyche with an invisible force for the subsequent political contexts of resisting the Partition of Bengal, the Language Movement and the liberation war.