Masks and Costumes of Ankiya Bhaona

Queering Assamese Bihu Festival Performance

“…4 My doctoral research focused primarily on the gendered aspects of Bihu performance in rural and urban areas of Assam and perpetuated the heteronormative narratives communicated by the interlocutors I interacted with during that time (Kheshgi, 2016). 5 Assam's Hindu dance-drama tradition called Bhaona, codified in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, incorporates a prominent practice of men performing female characters, whether they be amateur performers in village and urban communities, or bhokot (monk) residents in Assamese sattra monasteries (Sarma and Dutta, 2009;Chatterjee, 2020). The longstanding tradition of cisgender men performing as women in many Indian performance traditions raises important questions about how queer individuals navigate these spaces (Hansen, 2002;Prakash, 2016;Dost, 2017;Kamath and Lothspeich, 2022).…”