Bāuls in Conversation: Cultivating Oppositional Ideology

Songs of the Bauls: Voices from the Margins as Transformative Infrastructures

“…Having said that, it is worth noting that a few fortunate Baul performers received attention and financial benefits from the urban patrons and the governments, incorporated into the neoliberal structures of mobility; this paper investigates the condition of common Bauls and Fakirs who live in the lowest socioeconomic strata of rural Bengal. Moreover, this marginalized population of Bauls is experiencing threats from fake Bauls and from market-dictated uneven competition (in the domain of folk music) in that region (Knight 2010). For example, in Bangladesh, resourceful and technology-savvy music bands, chiefly constituted of urban youths, are gaining fame and money by performing Baul songs (sometime by distorting actual tunes) written by Baul Shah Abdul Karim, when the direct disciples of Baul Shah Abdul Karim namely Ronesh Thakur (and Late Ruhi Thakur) are forgotten.…”

“…Moreover, light-hearted Baul performances and/or folk-music competitions in popularity-based shows on televisions and other mediated platforms pose challenges to conventional practices of Bauls and Fakirs (Krakauer 2016). The proliferation of fake Bauls (with no spiritual and/or philosophical training or initiation) and urban folk-performers (from sophisticated upper class) and their commercialization of Baul songs threaten the survival of rural Bauls at the margins (Knight 2010). The ongoing marginalization of rural Bauls and Baul traditions are constituted amid market and religious forces that on one hand, co-opt Baul performances as commoditized aesthetics, and on the other hand, erase Baul articulations through ceaseless stigmatization and attacks on rural livelihoods.…”

Sufi and Bhakti Performers and Followers at the Margins of the Global South: Communication Strategies to Negotiate Situated Adversities

“…Again, due to the punishments like fatwas (and murder) or social sanctions like untouchability, the artists from the lower strata of society remain/become further marginalized in the spaces of discursivity; for several centuries, S&B artists have been experiencing such oppressions and destructions from the hegemon (Urban 2001). Moreover, religious fundamentalists also seek to co-opt, distort, and dilute the key messages and contributions of S&B poets and performers towards weakening and defaming their discursive practices (Knight 2010). Such traumatic experiences and history of social exclusion compelled the spiritual performers to fight the adversities and intolerances discursively in order to make their spiritual/ideological tradition alive and sustainable.…”

Global Sceptical Publics

“…They often intentionally and explicitly aim at transcending religious divisions and are associated with secularism in Bengal. See Openshaw 1997;Knight 2010;Schulz 2021. 7 This sense of shared political values prevails even though very few groups in the United Theatre Council have explicit communist leanings.…”