Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Rabindranath Tagore on Bauls

"One day I chanced to hear a song from a beggar belonging to the Baul sect of Bengal…What struck me in this simple song was a religious expression that was neither grossly concrete, full of crude details, nor metaphysical in its rarefied transcendentalism… "




Rabindranath Tagore, ‘The Man of My Heart’, Religion of Man, Hibbert Lectures for 1930.

Jogendranath Bhattacharya - an orthodox attack

Pandit Jogendranath Bhattarcharya, vehemently supporting high Brahminism, wrote, back in 1896:

"The Bauls are spoken of as vaishnavas; but properly speaking they are a godless sect… Aristocratic Brahminism can only punish them by keeping them excluded from the pale of humanity… if the Chaitanite Gossains, Christian Missionaries or Mahomedan Mullas could reclaim these they would be entitled to
the everlasting gratitude of mankind."


Jogendranath Bhattarcharya, Hindu Castes and Sects, Calcutta: 1896, 1973, pp. 381-2.

Who are the Bauls? Part II


"As will become clear, authorities on Bāuls agree on very little, and several contradictory images persist. While the passage cited accurately reflects the perceptions of some Bengalis, virtually all Dimock’s assertions would be contradicted by one or other specialist in this topic. Indeed one of the arguments of the present volume is that this lone male minstrel with ‘only the wind as his home’ is a relative newcomer in the history of ‘Bāuls.’ "



Jeanne Openshaw/ Seeking Bāuls of Bengal, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. xiii
artist: Purnendu Patri

Who are the Bauls? Part I


"Who then are the Bauls? The word itself means ‘mad’. When Bengalis use the term, they usually mean to indicate a type of mendicant religious singer who, dressed in tattered clothes deliberately made up of the garments of both Hindus and Muslims, wanders from village to village celebrating God in ecstatic songs, existing on whatever his listeners choose to give him. Although today he is possibly a householder… traditionally he has‘only the wind as his home’. His hair is long and beard matted, and as he sings he accompanies himself on a one stringed instrument…"
Edward C. Dimock Jr/ ‘Rabindranath Tagore – “the Greatest of the Bauls of Bengal” ’’, Journal of the Asiatic Society, 29:1, Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1959, p. 33.
artist:Dinkar Kaushik