EXPLORING THE FIELD OF SWANGS AND MAPPING THEIR ROUTE

The institution of Swang is quite a characteristic development of folk culture as it

developed in the cities of Bengal during the last 200 years. The participators in the
swang by means of singing in costume and by dancing were conscious of
performing a service to society by bringing home to the public the new
transformations which were coming into society and which in the opinion of
various patrons of the swang were not good for the society.

Swang as a popular form of amusement had been present in the Indian culture
since the ancient times. The art of expressing ideas through physical and facial
gestures is an ideal definition of swang. They can be held somewhat similar to the
European pantomimes tradition in constitution which were performances played
in the language of action. The swang performing parties usually went about the
city and the village to which it belonged in procession and caricatured various
social and political personalities and issues through ribald gestures, make up and
chhara. However, its immense popularity made various other forms of
entertainment to insert in their performance. That is why in the years to come
swang became a synonym for vigorous or exaggerated gestures meant for
revelation in the Bengali colloquial vocabulary. Thus, in this paper I have tried to
see how migration has an effect on the folk culture. How the content has changed
over time? In addition, how they were often used as the political tool.

As we have seen, the verbal discretion of high-falutin and mystical theories, the
coupling of serious myths with heir earthy, abusive parodies of Gods with their
comic doublets in rhymed ripostes, were an important part of Bengali folklore.
They offered a sort of non-official, extra-ecclesiastical version of the world, as
seen by the lower orders of society who had no access to Brahman-dominated,
Sanskrit zed society of the upper caste respectable people.

The cultural products and activities of the lower orders of 10th century Bengal in
general, and Calcutta in particular (the city at that time had become a centre of
cultural innovations that diffused outwards to the rest of the province),
developed in a large measure from the traditional folk culture of the countryside.
Right from the 15th century down to the beginning of the 18th century, there
flowed an undercurrent of secularization of religious myths in Bengali folk culture.
The rural people used stories and characters from mythology to express
contemporary social concerns and depict the gods and goddesses as ordinary
villagers, vulnerable like any other human being. The series of mangalkavyas or
narrative poems in praise of both the traditional Aryan pantheon and the local
Bengali godlings, composed during the 16th and 17th century period, were often a
realistic replica of the daily life in a rural Bengali society ( Banerjee;1989).

Sumanta Banerjee, in his article, talked about, how folk culture, like stalagmites
which are found only in caves, continue to develop within the cloistered confines
of a rural society. The pressures of the partition had beset folk traditions in other
parts of the world during periods of political and economic transition. Although
folk songs cannot and e into watertight compartments, for the sake of easier
comprehension, they may be grouped into broad categories.

In Parlour and the street, he further talked about Gambhira songs for instance
which give one a good idea of how seasonal songs, associated with certain
agricultural rites, often merge into social protest. Gambhiras were popular all
over the countryside of undivided Bengal from Dinajpur, Rangpur, Rajshahi in
Bangladesh to Maldah and Murshidabad in West Bengal. Sung in the months of
April-May, they formed part of a religious festival associated with the worship of
Shiva and his consort Parvati. The built-in penchant in the gambhiras or social
criticism has enabled folk singers in post Independent decades to express their
views on contemporary political developments in most imaginative ways. In the
years immediately following Partition and Independence, gambhira was chosen to
lampoon black marketers, corrupt politicians, inept bureaucrats, and dishonest
social and religious leaders (Banerjee; 1989).1

Migration and movements of human populations have always been an integral

element in the history of humankind. The migrants who came to Calcutta from
the villages brought with them a rich repertoire of entertainment, which they had
inherited from the rural folk culture. They not only kept alive the old culture in
the squalor of the growing metropolis of Calcutta, but also enriched it with new

1
For further discussion on this, see, Bangladesher Swang Proshongo, by Bireshwar Bandhopadhay,1996.
motifs borrowed from the surrounding scenes. The manifestations of this folk
culture can be divided into various distinct forms like the verbal compositions, the
various songs, recitations of rhymes, the poetical contests and others. There were
also spectacles like theatrical performances called jatras, comic shows of the
streets and marketplaces in the form of pantomimes, known as the Swang. There
were also various genres of folk humor, like proverbs and doggerels. The earliest
specimens of urban folk culture in Calcutta can be found in the humorous
doggerels and proverbs, jokes and rhymes about contemporary society that used
to make the rounds of the citys streets. The rat race among 18th century
Calcuttas English traders and their Bengali Banians and dewans to make fortunes
by every conceivable means was a target of raillery on the part of the citys lower
orders. The habit of lying and deceiving which had become ingrained in the citys
moneyed circles was a running theme in popular jokes. Thus, the swangs or
pantomime became a weapon in the hands of the underdog for lampooning the
upper classes. These swangs started as illustrations of common proverbs, but with
the development of the metropolis and the changes in the manners and customs
of its people, the pantomime artists began to mimic the various types of
characters and their habits. Special types of songs known as Swanger gan also
accompanied such mimicry.

At that time, swangs used to perform during the Saraswati Puja, and used to
criticize the civic authorities who themselves violated all misdemeanor. The
display, quite predictable, annoyed the authorities. The police used to arrest them
and made them pay heavy fines.

It will not be wrong to say that the swangs held a subaltern position and even
today, they continue to hold that position. Partha Chatterjee takes his focus to
the community Balarami, whose membership consists almost entirely of poor
low-caste householders. While conceding the empirical evidence for low-caste
opposition to caste hierarchies is voluminous, his general conclusion is the
popular opposing views are confined to the implicit. He cites as a mark of
subalternity their negativity and failure to construct an alternative universal to
the dominant dharma.
Now, coming to the Kartabhajas another minor religious sect, who emerged at a
critical historical moment and geographical location- the area in and around
Calcutta, the Imperial City, at the turn of the nineteenth century, the high point
of early capitalist development in the subcontinent. The majority of its following
was drawn from the classes who had been most negatively affected by the rapidly
changing economic context under colonial rule. In the village areas, they came
primarily from the poor peasantry of rural Bengal, who faced increasing hardships
under the new land revenue policies of the British India Company- their members
were mainly of low caste, poor, illiterate people, engaged in agricultural
operations. Withstanding the domination of the elite classes on them, they
gradually pressed for a popular religion, which would bring them all together and
enable them to stay united. Thus, a distinction came in their practice and they
divided it into two-folds- the esoteric and the exoteric practice. The esoteric
practices included their secret practices and the exoteric practices included the
songs, the rituals of the popular religion, which would bind all the lower class
people, peasants together (Urban; 2001).Therefore, this would act as a weapon
against the elites. Thus, as David Hardiman says, that religion is seen as a political
resource that is used by unscrupulous leaders to manipulate the peasantry for
their own selfish ends. Religion, it is argued, is important for peasant
consciousness not because peasant consciousness is inherently religious, but
religion is part of the ideological superstructure. All religions consist largely of
assimilated folk beliefs. This gives them their mass appeal and great pertinacity
over time.

The migrants of the villages who arrived in the new metropolis, Calcutta, in
search of jobs, carried the extraordinary degree of autonomy demonstrated by
the traditional folk culture of Bengal during the 15th-18th century period, into the
19th century. Artisans and poor people engaged in small-scale occupations who
settled down in the city brought with them the old folk songs and rituals, which
they not only kept alive, but also enriched them with new motifs borrowed from
the surrounding urban environment. The street literature of 19th century Calcutta-
songs, dances, doggerels, theatrical performances, recitations- became great
melting pot of tradition and topicality. New urban folk artists like kobiwalas
(poets who versified extempore and participated in verbal duels with rival kobis).
Jatra-oalas (composers of, and performers in indigenous theatrical forms
consisting of songs and dances) and swangs (pantomime artists who in street
performances lampooned the anglicized gentry and religious imposters) -
introduced innovations and changed considerably the style of old folk forms to
reflect the urban environment and accommodate secular comments, even dealing
with religious themes. Contemporary problems are often masqueraded in the
guise of religious myths in their songs (Banerjee; 1987).

An important aspect of the folk culture of the lower orders of 19th century Bengal
was ribaldry. The satisfaction of the body, from food to sex, was responsible for
some of the wisest and wittiest proverbs and sayings, as well as some of the most
rollicking and ribald songs and poems in Bengali folk literature of this period. An
almost impenitent tendency to show up human follies and frailties by depicting
humorously the normal and gross activities of ordinary mortals, to laugh at sex
and with sex, which we find in these forms of cultural expressions reflected
playfully a primitive sensuality.

The preponderance of ribaldry in 19th century folk literature could be traced to

certain historical factors. It derived from rudiments of gaiety and laughter, often
with sexual overtones, which are to be found in the old folk customs and rituals.
Carnivals and feasts were one such ritual which survived till the beginning of the
19th century was known as kada-kheur, or singing of obscene songs while
wallowing in muck and slime on navami, the third day of the Durga puja
festivities. Describing carnival and feasts of fools in medieval Europe during
certain periods of the year, Michail Bakhtin interprets them as a sort of defense
mechanism, where laughterliberates from the fear that developed in man
during thousands of years; fear of the sacred, of prohibitions, of the past, of
power.. In these festivals, Bakhtin says, the theme of mockery and abuse was
bodily and grotesque. This feast was a temporary suspension of the entire official
system with all its prohibitions and hierarchic barriers. For a short time, life came
out of its usual, legalized and consecrated furrows and entered the sphere of
Utopian freedom. Laughter springing from the grotesque concept of the human
body, often based on the material bodily lower stratum, frequently became a
weapon in the hands of the lower orders of lampoon the hypocrisy of the upper
class. Thus, Rabelias and his world, Bakhtin studies the interaction between the
social and the literary, as well as the meaning of the body Carnival- all are seen as
a whole, organized in a way that defies socioeconomic and political organization.
According to him, all are considered equal during Carnival. The carnival
atmosphere holds the lower strata of life most important, as opposed to higher
functions (thought, speech and soul) which were usually held dear in the
signifying order. In the carnival, usual, social hierarchies and properties are ended
up; emphasis is placed on the body in its open dimension, in its connection to the
life of the community. This emphasis is on the differences and separations
between them, allows for the unconscious of the historical dimension of human
life; for every death, there is a birth, a renewal of human spirit. This process
allows for progression (Bakhtin; 1984).

The profanities and oaths, the double entendres and bawdy quips that marked
the speech and proverbs of the women of the lower orders became a reservoir in
which various speech patterns and images of the culture folk humor which were
excluded from official intercourse, could freely accumulate. Thus, there were
various proverbs that were used by the swangs- live pantomime actors- who
during the Charak, hook-swinging festival in Chaitra (corresponding to April) the
last month of the Bengali year, or other religious festivities, went around the
streets of the city (Bandhopadhay; 1996).

In this broad framework of secularization and popularization of religious subjects,

the preponderance of humor and ribaldry reflected the same need for
overcoming the fear generated by feelings of sin and guilt, which were
propagated by the brahminical hierarchy through their orthodox interpretations
of religious myths. The awe-inspiring images of the divinities had to be
transformed into butts of ridicule, or familiar characters, in the Bengali folklore.
Symbols of power and vengeance like Shiva or Kali were turned upside down. All
that was terrifying became grotesque. People played with terror and laughed at
it. This became a comic monster.
The elite suppressed the folk culture to form its own distinct culture that could
obfuscate the multi-dimensional reality and its uncomfortable uncertainties by
presenting new concepts of morality and literature as eternal truths with the
prevailing tendency towards stability, one single meaning, and a uniform tone of
seriousness. It reinforced the pedantry of the brahminical hierarchy in its debates
and polemics over religious and social reforms, shaping in the process a highly
sanskritised Bengali language which was adopted by the Bhadraloks as a mark of
superiority over the plebeians. Thus, the folk culture of the then Bengal, built up,
being the weapons of the weak. It became a medium through which people of the
lower order, put up their problems and ridiculed the dominant order of the
society. Therefore, swangs were popularly used as the political tool in the society;
they were used mostly to portray any wrong done in the society. However, their
implication has changed now, but still they are withheld with great pride in many
parts of the villages of Bengal.