Anil Kumar Boro

... The Tribes of North East India Anil Boro Page 2. ... 16 PRASENJIT BISWAS is seriously engaged with issues of cultural pluralism, representation, identity and location politics. He is widely published and currently teaches Philosophy at the North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. ...

This mythical tale extant in Bodo culture narrates the tale of the forefather of the Bodos that is accepted as true and regarded as sacred. Besides narrating the relationships within a joint family, and love affairs in a tradition-bound society, it recounts the origin of the religious worship of the Bodos. The Bodos constitute one of the major ethnic communities of Assam and the Bodo language is a branch of the Tibeto-Burman family. Although an ancient language, there was no written literature in the Bodo language before the second decade of the twentieth century. Since then a good number of works on the rich folk literature of the Bodos have been published in the genre of poetry, short stories, novels, song and drama.

Folklore is as old as the mankind. Every society or community has its own distinctive folklore. Folklore consists of all aspects of social behavior like customs, traditions, rituals, food habits, dresses, folk beliefs, folk song, folktale, folk medicine, folk speech, singing, dancing, religion, worship etc. which has come down through the year. Manoranjan Lahary was one of the renowned writers in Bodo literature of Assam. He was a great novelist, poet, dramatist, editor, scholar, professor, critics, translator, and writer. He has contributed eight Novels to the Bodo literature. “Haina Muli” (1985) is the chronologically second Novel of Manoranjan Lahary. It is a social Novel written depending on the Bodo society of remote villages. Folklore and literature is very much related to each other. Literature depends on a society and society is essentially related to its traditions, rituals, customs and celebration as well as of course, folklore. Therefore the present paper is an attempt to...

incorporating the elements of folklore and folklife in contemporary literary forms has emerged to be a very significant trend. Such innovative exercise and exploration of the old forms have resulted in a relocation of the folk traditions in the India cultural landscape  . In the arena of Assamese popular music Dr Bhupen Hazarika has experimented with Assamese folk tradition reviving ,preserving, popularizing and assigning with new meanings.  in the new social contexts..  The paper is an attempt to explore how the composer and eminent singer has  used the folk tunes and melody and cultural treasures in his music making  ...

Questions of Identity are very pertinent in the present day context of folklore studies. Early Scholars and collectors of folklore were not bothered about these issues.  As Glassie says  collectors collect folklore as the  asset of tradition  and the community assigns it special meaning as symbol of identity . Nowadays many collection projects  are carried out as a result of such endeavor .in reality folklore is not an entity called identity. but it is in dialectical relationship between the individual and the collective. Identity is such a domain of life that  is made significant by  stress --during the struggles of the minorities within the nations or the same political territories.
Questions of identity also reveal the relation between the folk and their 'lore '  - the narratives, artifacts, rituals ,festivals . The present paper aims to examine these issues in the context of oral narratives of Bodo community , a tribal group in  Northeast India and their folklore .

The trickster  in folk narratives all over the
world is a tricky, skillful and resourceful character,
often full of contradictions and ambivalence.
A rogue and a clever deceiver, he can outwit and outplay
his adversaries by virtue of his wit and presence
of mind. The tricksters of Assamese folktales, unlike
the trickster of, say, Native American tales and myths,
isn’t a culture hero. The Assamese trickster is not
responsible for creating conditions that allow for the
civilization of human society.
The Assamese word for trickster is Tenton or Teton,
literally meaning “the clever one.”  The paper the the focuses on the special characteristics of the Assamese trickster figure .

WHERE  do the local communities of Northeast India
stand in the Globalized world? What is their
status and position in it? Is the tribal world of this remote
corner of the Indian sub-continent aware of the fast
changing global economic and technological scene and
consequent socio cultural tensions and crises today? Are
the people themselves aware of the processes and impacts
of globalization? If they are, are they willing to take part
in the process? These and myriad other questions come
to our mind when we ponder over the issue of
globalization in the context of Northeast India.
By globalization we simply mean that the world has
become more and more easily accessible and open to
any one of us. This process has made the modern nations
and communities increasingly more interdependent,
susceptible to the market forces and flexible to the inroads of globalization .  These issues are being addressed here in the context of the communities of Northeast India
changing currents. Almost every one of us is aware that
there is no escape however strong our resistance might
be, from the all too powerful clutch of globalization

As a poet, Sankha Ghosh stands unique in the poetic tradition of Bengal. The present author’s interest in the poetry of Sankha Ghosh is purely guided by an academic intention of translating his poems. Of course, like many other contemporary Bengali poets, it is the poetry of Sankha Ghosh that attracted me much. As young students, we had many opportunities to read the Bengali poets in original or in translation. For the bilingual and multilingual readers like many of us [the last generation of writers in Assam], reading Bengali poetry and fiction was just more than a privilege. We, like many enthusiastic readers, read Bengali poetry and fiction along with the new arrivals in the English book shelf. This, as many of our generation think, keep us abreast of the new trends and techniques in fiction and poetry writing. From this perspective, reading Sankha Ghosh’s Babur poems was an exceptional experience.

As a folklore scholar Prof Goswami needs no introduction in the literary and academic world of Assam. Besides being a pioneer in the field of Folklore studies he was also a great contributor to the world of Assamese literature. The focus of the present paper will be on the unique contributions of  Prof Parfulladatta Goswami  in the fields of folklore collections and interpretations . The organisers have asked me to focus on the folklore collections and interpretation among the tribes of Assam under the able initiative Prafulladatta Goswami , who was the pioneer in folklore studies among the various ethnic communities of Assam and northeast India .  The Archival Centre for tribal culture and folklore which came up in the year 1955 at the university took some important projects for documentation of tribal folklore under able leadership of Prof B.K. Baruah( P.Goswami’s mentor ) and P.Goswami . The folklore materials like tales, songs and oral traditions of the tribes like the Bodos ,Garos , Misings, Khasis ,Sonowals  were covered under  this project  and books on folktale and songs were published later.  Boro Kachari solo, Khasi Jayantia tales, Epic lore of the Gaors, Folk songs of the Bodos are some titles of such publications.Goswami is well known for his magnum opus , Ballads and Tales of Assam published in the year 1960( second edition 1970,reprint 2015 ).The book was the result of his painstaking research in the field of the ballads and folk tales of Assam region .It covers wide range of folk tales from the Assamese society , including the tribal folktales from different tribal groups of the region