How Assam Govt is Twisting Traditions Around Bihu Festivals to Fit Hindutva Narrative
On April 14, as Assam celebrated Bohag Bihu, the Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma wrote a long post on X linking the celebration of Goru Bihu with gaumata. This is a distortion of what Goru Bihu signifies and is an attempt to link it with the ‘sacred cow’ discourse, which does not have a presence in the northeastern state.
The many Bihus
Assam celebrates three main Bihus – Bohag Bihu, Kati Bihu and Magh Bihu – each of them deeply connected to different seasons and agriculture. The Bohag Bihu, also known as Rongali Bihu, is celebrated to mark the beginning of the agricultural season, which falls in the month of April in the English calendar. Rang means fun-festivities and colours. This marks the peak spring season when flowers bloom and nature is filled with diverse colours.
Kati Bihu, celebrated in October/November, falls in the Assamese month of Kati. It is also known as Kongali Bihu, where Kongal means ‘scarce’, signifying an agriculturally lean period when the crops are yet to be harvested. There are no grand feasts during this Bihu; rather, earthen lamps are lit in the fields and near granaries. This is done to pray for a good harvest and the oil lamps ward off insects and evil spirits.
The third one is Magh Bihu, also known as Bhogali Bihu, which usually overlaps with Makar Sankranti celebrations in other parts of the country. As the name suggests, it is the Bihu of bhog (feast). The granaries are full during this time and people collectively celebrate good yield. The celebrations begin with people thanking the gods for a good harvest, after which they enjoy a feast together for a continued community bonding after months of hard work.
Goru is not gaumata
Let’s take the example of Bohag Bihu. It is celebrated in diverse styles, across communities and for almost a month – each day having a distinct meaning. The first day is called ‘Goru Bihu’ but here, goru does not automatically translate to cow – any four legged cattle fits the bill. In Assamese, Gai is the exact translation for cow, domora means a calf, bolod means an ox and sengori means a young female cow. Each of these terms are then suffixed with Goru.
It can also imply, in everyday spoken vocabulary, a stupid/stubborn person.
Sarma’s translation of goru as gaumata is not only wrong but also carefully crafted to fit a particular narrative and an act of homogenising culture. During Goru Bihu – cattle are taken to the nearby water bodies/river, given a bath, fed with various types of vegetables and pitha. Older ropes are discarded and new ones used to tie the cattle. This marks as a preparation for the upcoming agricultural season.
The next day – called Manuh Bihu – is dedicated to the celebration of the people. Axomiyas wear new clothes, visit each other and feast; young ones visit the elderly, bow their heads to take blessings and prepare for the upcoming season. The third day is reserved for the deities.
Rituals of Bihu
All Bihu celebrations are a marker of cultural time and transition – a sankranti – closely associated with the agrarian culture/cycle in Assam and with it a certain assertion of bio-cultural rights. The Bohag Bihu is a plural festival. It is celebrated with its own specificities by various communities in Assam. For instance, in Sadiya (one of the authors belongs to this area), Bihu is intimately related to the four thān – an institution that is often associated with the Vaishnavite tradition of Assam, where animal sacrifice is performed – of buffalo, goat, duck and pigeons. One of the thān is the Kesai Khati (eater of the raw flesh) or the Tamreshwari mandir (the Goddess of copper temple), more popularly also known as Kamakhya of the east. It became popular during the Chutia kingdom and was a prominent place of worship for many hill tribes too. Both Shaivite and Vaishnavite influence is noted in this temple.
Old villages in Sadiya offer their allegiance to any one of the four thān where blood sacrifice is a norm and an essential ritual. On the first Wednesday of the Bohag month and not the first day of that month, the sacrificial ritual is performed which signals the beginning of Bihu for the people of the place. The sacrificed animal and bird meat are then either cooked and consumed or carried away by people as prasad which one can be sure doesn’t fall under any usual tradition of Sanatana Dharma.
Sadiya Bihu is also often referred as Deori Bihu as the priest who performs the sacrifice belongs to the Deori community. The priests who perform the sacrificial rituals in Sadiya travel from villages near Dirak Gate, across the Lohit river.
How people celebrate Bihu
People from various communities – ethnic and non-ethnic – participate in the Bihu festival. It is a festival that is a marker of unity, harmony and hospitality. One visits each other’s homes, and gifts new clothes to their loved ones. Gamucha is often that gift item which is again a signifier of the cultural field and material culture that is markedly different and plural.
In short, it has its own identity and as the festival thrives due to the celebration of togetherness and a collective sentiment of the festive season. It celebrates this living with diversity and difference, almost touching the essence of a carnival – where there is a momentary suspension of differences in society.
A variety of customs and practices mark Bihu. The celebration of the cattle is symbolic of the bio-cultural and agricultural practices of Assam, which is still primarily an agrarian economy. There are so many other cultural practices that dot the Bihu celebration.
For instance, ‘the battle of eggs’, a fun game between two eggs is perhaps etched in our memory as a child participating in it, particularly if you grew up in rural Assam.
The game is simple. One person holds a raw egg, exposing its tip in an O-shape grip between the thumb and the index finger, while the other player gently taps it with another egg. The egg that cracks first loses, and the winner takes it home for cooking. Players test the strength of the egg by tapping a coin on the shell and listening closely. But gone are those days!
Another popular game during Bihu, which has been popularised by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in the English speaking world, is cock fighting. There is a ‘deep play’ involved in this activity and is a form of sentinel education. It offers another occasion of bon-homie. This game also offers a visual sight to understand the profile of the emotional matrix of society such as the thrill of risk, despair of loss and pleasure of triumph.
Another similar game played during the festival is collective fishing, where people go to rivers and beel (water bodies) to fish. It is another literal and symbolic gesture of bon-homie, and, in a post colonial context, a reclaiming of nature and spaces.
Throughout the festivities, rice beer remains an integral part of Bihu celebration. Prasenjit Biswas writes, “The varieties of rice beers across the Northeast also mark the possibility of a material basis for such rituals. Rejuvenation of both ancestral and other spirits living across the hills, rivers and fields, occupy the imagination by naming them, possessing them and celebrating their release in the form of healing and successful harvest.” Fermentation and rice itself, also a primary ingredient to make the pitha/snacks, become central to Bihu.
By connecting Goru Bihu with worship of cows, the chief minister is stripping the Bihu festival of its foundational meaning and giving it a religious narrative that suits the Hindutva ideology. In a similar fashion, key cultural aspects, foundational life forms and even historical figures are already being re-casted with religious lens, to support the Hindutva ideology led by the RSS.
The authors of this article have earlier reported on how Ahom general Lachit Borphukan was re-casted as ‘Hindu General’ fighting off a Muslim invader (outsider). It is in this sacred cow discourse that laws like ‘The Assam Cattle Preservation Act, 2021’ find its ideological support. Such reconstruction enables Hindutva discourse to further strengthen in Assam to absorb them into the larger Hindu fold.
Bihu, a multi-ethnic festival that involves multiple species, things and processes, has becomes a convenient example to manufacture such a misplaced narrative.
Bihu is not just about cows. Any rewriting and recreation of the recurring festival is an assault and insult of this wonderful cultural ethos and sensibilities that it carries. As Assam’s Jyotiprasad Agarwala said, such elements in society, the ones who fight to break its plurality are duxkriti – elements that corrupt culture.
Manoranjan Pegu is an Executive Council Member of Tribal Intellectual Collective, India, and writes about tribes, labour and politics.
Suraj teaches at Indian Institute of Management - Kozhikode.
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