POINT BLANK - Language cannot be a static entity : Anil Raichoudhury

Noted ethno-linguistic researcher Anil Raichoudhury has written several volumes on the Axamiya language, his philosophies about it and its origins. In conversation with Seven Sisters Post, he talks about the idea of language and literature and how inter-ethnic works can make a difference to understanding the different peoples of this land.



Language evolves gradually. It is like water. Barriers can’t be created for it. People here today, the elite political class in particular, want to drum up the language card for their interests as if the language will be eaten up by someone else








Could you tell us about your philosophy regarding the Axamiya language?

It is important to understand the origins of the language and society to see where we stand today. We need to discount the theories about Brahmins from Kanauj bringing in elements of their language during the time of Bhaskar Varman because that was too far back in time and has very little in the way of evidence. Axamiya, as we understand it today, can therefore be said to have evolved from the language spoken by the Bhuyans of the Narayanpur area in Lakhimpur. We should remember that they were traders and elites living in close proximity with the Chutiyas: these early influences need to be taken into account. The language of the Bhuyans is said to have been brought from Magadh. But language is a gradual process; it does not simply fly in and land somewhere. So, as the Bhuyans progressed eastwards, the Axamiya language used in Goalpara, Nalbari, Kamrup and other areas gained currency.

That was how we began. About where we are today, it is the culmination of a process that started during the British times. The colonisers tried to divide us on ethno-linguistic lines, especially Bengal and Assam, in 1905, and even earlier. The divisions that existed earlier became deeper. We ourselves played a part in that. For instance, when Lakshminath Bezbarua started the periodical Bahi, Pratap Chandra Goswami and others launched Axam Bandhu and decried what they described as a hijacking of the language by Upper Assamese. In 1870, when the court language was to be changed from Bengali to Axamiya, sections of the people in Lower Assam protested saying the language in question was confined to a small part of Upper Assam.

Today, because of reasons of convenience, we speak or interact in our everyday lives in other languages. If I were to talk to you in what is correct Axamiya, you might not get half of what I am saying. Language evolves gradually. It is like water. Barriers can’t be created for it. People here today, the elite political class in particular, want to drum up the language card for their interests as if the language will be eaten up by someone else. Things don’t happen like that.

What have been the major influences of ethnicities from this land and neighbouring peoples in the formation of Axamiya language and its subsequent literature?

There are mainly three ways a language develops: through exchange of social production methods such as agriculture (and its accompanying jargon), through royal patronage and through the spread of religion. All three streams converged in the case of Axamiya. If we take up Bodo influences, you will see that they, on migrating from Tibet, as is supposed, brought shifting cultivation with them but found a different method here. On interacting with other peoples here, they exchanged cultivation systems and also the specific terms associated with them. Bodo influence can be seen to a greater degree in Lower Assamese today. The word “gariya” in Bodo, which is “dhud” in Axamiya, meaning a lazy person, becomes “gaira” in Lower Assamese. “Phraphri” in Bodo becomes “pakri” in Lower Assamese and stands for the pakori tree. Papaya or “omita” in Axamiya is called “modphal” in Lower Assamese and comes from “mudumphul” in Bodo. “Domora” in Axamiya, which is “damra” in Lower Assamese, is “dambra” in Bodo. There are similar instances from Koch-Rajbongshi and other ethnicities. As far as East Bengali dialects are concerned, their influences go back as far as the kings of Gaur, who sent people to settle here as a way to increase their influence and prestige. Thus all these strands have converged. Naturally these influences are also seen in literature.

What is your view about Bar Axom and where does language and literature play a part in it?
If language and literature can be taken as major factors in creation of society, matters are much different today. Our culture has eroded to its very base. Inter-mixing is inevitable and so is assimilation. If the elite class of Axam uses language as a tool to promote its vested interests, this is bad news for us all. To create Bar Axam, we have to create a common interest among the people and ethnicities who live here. We have had language and political revolutions here, but no economic revolutions. It is only through class struggle that people can be united, and when that happens, common language and literature emerge too. Look at the Nagas, for instance. Till the interests of everyone are considered, languages and literature as they exist today will have very little to do with Bar Axam as the idea means to me.

Have the writings of people like Rong Bong Terang and Jiban Narah helped in bridging ethnic divides through literature?
I have only read Terang. While these writings are good, we have to ask if any Axamiya writers attempted to write in the languages of the other tribes. This is partly because if they do, and talk about facets of Axamiya life known to everyone, then there is no motive for the reader to discover. Terang’s own Rongmilir Hahi is meant for us to understand Karbi society. Its Karbi version never came out. Also, inter-ethnic literature is not a one-way process. Everyone has to pitch in. Readership and literature itself develops for a certain utilitarianism. If, say, the working classes of all these ethnicities in Axamiya society had united they would have had a motivation to bridge their divides. That is when literature could play a role. Till then such works would only be, at best, exotic introductions.

DUST OFF - No separatist treatise - Revisiting Parag Das’s Sanglot Fenla : Aruni Kashyap

 The novel is not an apologia for violence. It attempts to show how the Assamese had to take the course of armed resistance after all democratic means had been exhausted. 

Sanglot Fenla

Parag Kumar Das

Udangshri Prakashan,1993

`50, 212 pages

Paperback/Novel

I have heard many people in Delhi and Guwahati, in Golaghat, Mayong and Nagaon, tell me that they had struggled with a strong desire to go to the forests of Burma after reading Parag Das’s Sanglot Fenla. While I was growing up, I was never denied a book but in 1993 or ‘94, when I had asked for a copy of the novel after seeing a poster hung in the Guwahati Book Fair, my father had instead bought me a young-adult novel. Forbidden stuff has a strange allure and many years later, I spent an entire day scanning the length and breadth of Guwahati looking for it.

Sanglot Fenla, which roughly translates as Revolution’s Army, captured the minds of an entire generation. During my undergrad years, reading Manoram Gogoi’s memoirs Paragdar Xannidhyat (In Paragda’s Company), I was amazed reading about its popularity. When was the last time the publication of a book became an event in itself, a cultural moment? In the world, I could only think of the release of the Harry Potter novels and recently, Haruki Murakami’s 108Q. Sanglot Fenla was serially published from July 1992 in the pages of Budhbar, the newspaper Das edited. Its first edition was over at the Guwahati Book Fair that had started on January 20 and the next edition was printed for the Asom Sahitya Sabha’s 59th session at Sibasagar. Due to some tiff between the organisers and the publishers, the book shops were shut in protest during the Sabha. Gogoi narrates that even during this phase, hundreds of people thronged Budhbar’s stall only to buy Sanglot Fenla and Rastrodrohir Dinalipi (A Seditioner’s Diary, 1992). One old woman demanded a copy immediately despite being told that they were not selling as a mark of protest. “I came all the way from Lakhimpur only to buy these two books, you better give them to me,” she said. Has anyone heard of an old lady travelling 415 kilometers only to buy two books?

Sanglot Fenla is no more in print, but has left an enduring legacy. In the early ‘90s, after the counter insurgency operations, many ULFA cadres had surrendered. The ones still underground nurtured a romantic idea of the separatist insurgency. Away from the hunger, diseases and death in the valleys of Burma, they were leading a life of luxury in Guwahati and Dibrugarh, earning a bad name for the organisation. But there were many more cadres who were still committed and took their goal seriously. Parag Das wanted to celebrate the struggle of these committed cadres, who according to him had not yet been co-opted into the system.

Parag Kumar Das

Actually, there is no single narrative thread in the novel. It is about Digonto, his training in Burma, where he had seen the hard work of many of his comrades. It is about how various sections of the society such as the Assamese tribals and migrant Muslims were excluded from the movement and the immense potential these groups had to contribute to it was left untapped by the mainly upper-caste ULFA leadership. In many ways, Sanglot Fenla reworks the picaresque novel. It rests in the tradition of The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling or Kim by Rudyard Kipling by following the escapades of a hero over a range of experiences. But Sanglot Fenla is not comic from any angle. It is the search for an alternative: what happens when all attempts of democratic means to achieve justice get exhausted? What happens when you are betrayed by your own comrade-in-arms? What happens when decadence and luxury and arrogance traps the rebel? How does one deal with the irony of running a rebellion under the indulgence of the same government you want to overthrow – everyone in Assam has speculated about the nexus between the AGP government led by Prafulla 

Mahanta and ULFA – something which Parag Das was very critical of and rightly so.

However, the novel is not an apologia for violence. Rather, it attempts to show how the Assamese had to take the course of armed resistance after all democratic means had been exhausted. It is also not a separatist treatise for youths who read the book unguided. In fact, to understand the novel properly, one must read Parag Das’s non-fiction and Manorom Gogoi’s memoirs. What Das narrates in the novel is merely an extension of his narrative non-fiction retold with characters and situations.

Throughout his career, Parag Das dreamt of a multi-hued Assam, bound by unity because he knew that breaking down into small groups would not help and would only appease the central government’s imperial design that has always feared the common cultural thread binding different communities in Assam. He also tried to raise awareness on human rights abuses by the Indian Army in Assam. Sanglot Fenla fits into this larger project: but what redeems the novel from the clutches of narrow, jingoistic nationalism is his depiction of the inhuman brutality of the ULFA cadres on their “traitors”, their decadence. Chillingly, the torture scenes at the Indian Army camp and the ULFA camps are very similar and successfully (sadly) compete with torture scenes of Chilean testimonios under Augusto Pinochet’s regime.

FRONTISPIECE - Zombies in no-man’s land : Amit R Baishya

Amit R Baishya takes us to the no-man’s zone between India and Bhutan through the testimonio-fiction of former rebel Raktim Sarma. 

Sarma reveals the existential
fears of the guerrilla that
his personal destiny may
have become unmoored from the
collective context of the revolution

Former United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) rebel, Raktim Sarma, is the author of Borangar Ngang and Kafila. Both are fictional accounts loosely based on his experiences as a guerrilla. While the former represents life in the underground camps in Bhutan (up to Operation All Clear in 2003), the latter narrates events occurring after Pratyush, the protagonist of both novels and a fictional alter-ego of Sarma, is released from prison. 

Borangar Ngang represents Sarma’s strongest literary achievement and is comparable with some of the best examples from the genre of guerrillero testimonio emerging from Latin America. Well known books from this genre include Che Guevara’s Bolivian Diaries and the former Sandinista Omar Cabezas’ Fire on the Mountain. Sarma insists in his introduction that his novel should be read as a fictional account based on his experiences. I will therefore, refer to it by an awkward neologism of my own: testimonio-fiction.   

Sarma’s testimonio-fiction has to be located first within a genre in Assamese literature dealing with the experiences of guerrilleros in “no-man’s zones” between the boundaries of India, China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan. Probably the best example of this is Parag Das’s novel Sanglot Fenla which shares some notable features of the guerrillero testimonio. The second genre with which it shows an affinity possesses a distinct narrative structure characterised by two main features. First, although these texts are non-fictional testimonials in the first person, they resemble the structure of the literary bildungsroman – the narrative of gradual individual growth into a particular form of consciousness. However, the difference between the bildungsroman and the testimonio, as the literary critic John Beverley points out, is that in the former, a collective social situation is experienced as personal destiny while in the latter, the narrator speaks in the “name of a community or group, approximating in this way the symbolic function of the epic hero...”  

Amit R Baishya

Ball State University, Indiana

Second, we can say that guerrillero testimonios reveal an epical or epochal notion of the everyday with the figure of the male guerrillero at its center. A similar sensibility permeates Sanglot Fenla. For instance, in the closing scene, Diganta, the protagonist of the novel, and another guerrilla, Probin, walk out “like courageous soldiers”. They reject the lucrative incentives that former militant, Ranjit, and other “traitors” to the cause offer them in return for their surrender. At this point, Diganta is released after prolonged incarceration and excruciating torture by security forces. The last lines of the novel are revealing – “Dawn was a long way off.” The first part of Sanglot Fenla concludes here. As a literary trope, Barbara Harlow notes, such inconclusive endings play with the symbolism of dawn and darkness and signal a “commitment to the future.”  

The world depicted in Borangar Ngang is different. It would not be incorrect to call it an anti-epic. The life-worlds of guerrilleros are simultaneously death-worlds which, to quote the postcolonial thinker Achille Mbembe, are “new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living dead.” Usually, the persistence of revolutionary hope sustains the guerrillero’s belief that inhabiting the death-world in the present presages a passage into a life-world. However, in Borangar Ngang, the death-world is experienced as a world bereft of possibilities. Doubts about the failure to hope for the final culmination of the “people’s” revolution are constantly expressed. These doubts reveal the existential fears besetting the guerrilla that his personal destiny may now have become unmoored from the collective context of the revolution. 

Given the anti-epic nature of this novel and the subtle departure from recognisable forms of anticolonial and revolutionary political action, does the narrative gesture towards a different space of the ethico-political? The form of the political that the text gestures towards is different from arguments presented by literary works on revolutions in colonial or neocolonial areas – namely, the growth of an individual revolutionary consciousness and the gradual immersion in the cause through a “love” for the people. Central to this different ethics and politics is what Mbembe terms “the generalised instrumentalisation of human existence and the material destruction of human bodies and populations.”    

Thus, in Borangar Ngang, we notice a relentless focus on the dying and decaying body of the defeated, isolated guerrilla abandoned in “wild zones.” At the beginning of the novel, Pratyush feels at home in the bucolic pleasures of nature. However, as the guerrilla band disintegrates from lack of organisational support, internal dissension and acts of betrayal, the natural environment is represented as anything but bucolic. The guerrillas regularly cross the heavily forested zones in the Indo-Bhutan border into Assam and back. The lack of water in the densely forested areas often force the guerrillero to lap the water that collects in the footmarks left by elephants. The army’s techniques to capture guerrillas also resemble those used for trapping animals. The narrator recounts an episode where a guerrilla contingent is ambushed by the army. While many guerrillas are killed, an injured guerrilla named Bonojit Deka falls into the hands of the armed forces. His eyes are gouged out, acid is poured on his face and his corpse is strung on a tree while the army lies in wait for the guerrillas to come and claim it, much like a hunter strings up bait.  

However, the potential of being reduced to the level of zombies in no-man’s zones has an antidote: love. The affect of love is best illustrated in a lengthy incident in the novel that involves one of Pratyush’s closest comrades, Anurag.  Anurag’s band is ambushed by the army on a reconnaissance mission across the no-man’s land in Bhutan and four of them including Anurag go missing. They are given up for dead, until one, Deepkon, messages via radio that he is stranded in the forest and badly injured. When the army finally withdraws, the guerrilla band sends out a search party that includes Pratyush, to retrieve the (presumed) dead bodies. After two days of searching, they hear someone crying out weakly in the distance. They come across Deepkon lying hidden within some tall elephant grass: 

(Deepkon’s) bullet-ridden leg had swollen considerably and resembled a bloated banana tree… They had never imagined that Deepkon would be alive like this. The sight before them horrified Pratyush and his troop. The smell of rotting flesh was wafting in the air. Kamal examined Deepkon’s bullet-ridden leg by lifting it carefully and saw, to his horror, that hundreds of insects came crawling out of the holes that had been bored into the flesh by the bullets. Deepkon screamed in intense agony. The horrifying sight of insects crawling out of the body of a living person filled Pratyush with so much disgust that he was forced to close his eyes. 

Somehow clinging on to life, the body called Deepkon resembles a form of death-in-life. We notice an absolute disjunction between the speaking and the living being here. Pratyush cannot bear to look at this sight. Sarma shows us the gruesome scene for a split second before telling us to turn our eyes away. This recurrent showing of the disjunction between the speaking and the living being and then enjoining us to turn the eyes away undercuts the epic, heroic tonality of the classical form of the guerrillero testimonio and instead enjoins us to focus on the reduction of the human body to the level of thinghood in a no-man’s zone that is outside the reach of law.

Sarma’s testimonio-fiction shows how “ordinary” feelings like love, friendship and trust can still sustain horizons of hope and orientations towards futurity, even when any semblance of a recognizable form of life, as in the instance narrated above, dissipates in zones of emergency. More than anything else, the exploration of the ordinary dimensions of human existence in states of emergency in Borangar Ngang remains Sarma’s most enduring achievement.

Eyes like the sun: Mamoni Goswami’s short stories

Folklorist and writer, Bhrigu Mohan Goswami, finds that reading Indira Goswami’s short stories is like seeing the world in a grain of sand

Jnanpith Award winner Mamoni Raisom Goswami gained fame as a novelist only after she had become known to the readers through her short stories. There was a reason behind why she loved to write novels more than short stories.  In her own words, “the vast world of novels is like the sky while the world of short stories is a part of the sky as reflected in the water collected in a cow’s footprint”. 

Sinaki Morom (1960), a collection of short stories, was Goswami’s first book in print. There were very few women fiction writers at the time. Her short stories drew the attention of readers as well as authors, young and old.

The world of her short stories is vast. It will not be possible to discuss all her short stories in this short essay. The discussion here will focus only on some of the stories included in Mamoni Goswami’sFavourite Short Stories (1998). This book has 15 stories – ‘Sanskar’, ‘Yatra’, ‘Ishwariya Sangshai aru Prem’, ‘Poroshu Patoror Nad’, ‘Hriday’, ‘Udong Bakas’, ‘Barafar Rani’, ‘Pashu’, ‘Nangath Chahar’, ‘Parash Ratan’, ‘Riniki Riniki Dekhisu Yamuna’, ‘Matri’, ‘Parashmoni’, ‘Sei Endhar Puharoru Adhik’ and ‘Bijanu’. These stories appeal to me for they display Goswami’s style, narrative, use of local dialects and metaphors among others. They also show her preference for distinctive subject matters – the heart of a woman, folk culture, love of nature and the burning issues of Assam and other parts of India.

Dr Banikanta Kakati had written in ‘Nari Hriday’ (Woman’s Heart), one of the essays in his book Sahitya aru Prem (Literature and Love), that the authentic representation of a woman’s heart and nature in literature will remain elusive until the emergence of female writers with original talents. With the arrival of writers like Mamoni Raisom Goswami, this has become possible. If one reads Goswami’s short stories and novels, one can get a clear picture of the nature of a woman’s heart. Male writers would not have been able to do what Goswami had done with such brilliance.

Goswami wrote ‘Matri’, ‘Parashmoni’, ‘Sei Endhar Puhororu Adhik’ and ‘Bijanu’ when she was a college student. Morning shows the day! We can see signs of classic writings in these stories which, though set in Assam, have a universal appeal.

In ‘Matri’, childless teacher Madhu adopts an orphan, Soun, and puts him in the lap of his wife Padumi who has all the fine feelings of a woman. However, for a moment, she also loses her temper. Padumi says to Madhu, “We don’t know whose son he is. You have brought him straight home simply because you are a teacher. Do you know how much this little boy eats? His is not just a stomach; he is like a pot used for a feast.” (p221). Such comments from Padumi make him think: “These days human love has also lost its purity. How can you trust others when you can’t trust your own people?” At this point in time, Padumi tells her husband that she has become pregnant. Madhu is worried again: “Being the mother of her own child, perhaps she will ill treat Soun twice as much as she did before.” The much awaited day arrives, but Padumi gives birth to a stillborn. Now she understands the meaning of motherhood. She says, “Bring Soun to me. I just want to touch his body. Only once…” Nothing can better explain a mother’s longing for her child.

Goswami unravels the deep recesses of the mind of a woman and looks at conventions from a new viewpoint in ‘Sei Endhar Puhororu Adhik’. The traditional character of Damayanti in this short story believes that the greatest ornament of man is his personality. Treatment of tradition from a fresh perspective is one of the characteristics of Goswami’s literary works.

‘Sanskar’ is one of het most famous creations. She boldly wrote this story at a mature age, exposing the hypocrisies in orthodox Brahmin society. It revolves around the mysterious life story of a poor widow. ‘Yatra’ highlights the effects of insurgency, floods, and so on in Assam. 

A Ramayana scholar of renown, Goswami lays bare the heart of woman in ‘Ishwariya Sangshai aru Prem’. It is the story of widow Ishwari and widower Dharmabahadur. It weds Ram bhakti with earthly love and is written from her experiences as a participant in discourses on the Ramayana in India and abroad. In ‘Udong Bakas’, the character of Taradoi has been very tragically depicted. The story is an attempt at building a classless society, free of the prevalent caste system. However, the author is not sure how the change will come. The story has an undertone of despair. ‘Nangath Chahar’ is about the slum areas in Delhi. It shows the writer’s love for the Dalits. ‘Parash Ratan’ is one of the best love stories authored by Goswami. In ‘Riniki Riniki Dekhisu’, the writer goes looking for love like a free bird, but ends up a caged parrot. “Love should be spontaneous, unfettered,” says Sananda, an important character in the story.

The short stories of Mamoni Raisom Goswami are replete with her diverse experiences. She has eyes like the sun, the rays of which fall on everything. Thus, in her short stories and novels, we find many news things which we would otherwise fail to see with our own naked eyes. 

Source: Goswami, Bhrigu Mohan. 2010 (2006). Asamiya Sahitya Alochana. Guwahati: Jyoti Prakashan

Following the footsteps of Rama : Siddhartha Sarma

Bal Sahitya Akademi winner Siddhartha Sarma brings to light a facet of Mamoni Goswami that is often ignored: that of a world renowned academic and scholar

Not only did scholars of 

Ramayana and Vaishnavite 

traditions follow her academic 

writings avidly, they also 

sought her advice and 

guidance on translation 

and analytical works

One of the turning points in Goswami’s life as a scholar was during her stay at Vrindavan, where she pursued her research at the Institute of Oriental Philosophy on a scholarship from the government of Assam in 1969.

Goswami had already inherited a strong interest in Vaishnavite traditions and literature, since her family belonged to that sect of the state. But at Vrindavan, she bought a voluminous edition of Tulasidas’Ram Charit Manas and began her scholarly journey into the numerous retellings of the Ramayana. She did her PhD on a comparative study of Tulasidas’ Ramayana and Madhav Kandali’s Ramayana from Assam, a work which has been subsequently cited by numerous scholars as a ground-breaking analysis in the field of studies on the Indian epic.

Continuing in this theme, Goswami wrote Ramayana: From Ganga to Brahmaputra which was released in 1996 by the then president of the country. In this monumental work, she has summed up the various iterations that the epic has undergone over the centuries in North and East India.  She also attended several International Ramayana Conferences in countries across South and Southeast Asia, including Thailand, Indonesia and China as one of the world’s foremost scholars specialising in the story of Rama. Besides several articles in national and international articles on this subject, she also wrote the novel Dasarathir Khoj in 1999.

As a Ramayana scholar, she was also naturally drawn into the preservation and study of ancient manuscripts from Assam written on various subjects. She actively campaigned for preserving these invaluable bits of Assamese culture. However, her interests as a scholar were not limited to the epic alone. She also actively pursued research into Buddhist traditions of art and storytelling. Her anthology on the stories from the Jataka, titled Jataka Katha, is particularly influential among students of Buddhist Studies.

As a professor of Modern Indian Languages and Linguistic Studies at Delhi University, her contribution to language studies is substantial and influential. Besides her numerous novels in Assamese, which were translated into English and which reflect on various aspects of Assamese society, she also worked on other languages. For instance, Kalam, a collection of Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and Bengali short stories was co-translated by her into Assamese, bringing a lot of works otherwise not accessible to Assamese readers. In 1988, she marked another milestone in Assamese translation by bringing to readers Premchandar Suti Galpa, an anthology of the great Hindi writer’s best-known works. In 1978, she translated the Malayalam novel Arana Zika Neram into Assamese as Adha Ghanta Samay.

Her reach was not just national: it went abroad too. Not only did scholars of Ramayana and Vaishnavite traditions follow her academic writings avidly, they also sought her advice and guidance on translation and analytical works. Meanwhile, as a language scholar, she also avidly followed international works, translating Shinji Tajima and Kang Hoo Hyon’s noted book Sarisnipar Sakalo into Assamese.

She was also closely associated with the publication of Volumes VII and VIII of the definitive History of Indian Literature. The two volumes were published in 1991 and 1995 respectively by the Sahitya Akademi.

In particular, her study and articles on Vaishnavite art and dance forms of Assam actually helped bring about awareness in the rest of the country and abroad about Assam’s deep traditions of Vishnu worship. Her articles, which she presented at forums and seminars in India and abroad, on contemporary and historical women writers of the country, have also been cited as comprehensive accounts combining both scholarly insight and a writer’s creative eye at understanding how female writing has evolved with the changing generations

The colour of Shakti in her : Namita Gokhale

Writer Namita Gokhale speaks of the empathetic friendship she shared with Indira Goswami

While Indira Goswami was at Delhi University, our friendship began. Both widowed young, both women writers, we shared an unspoken sympathy

Indira Goswami, as I remember her, always had an aura of immense, even startling, vibrancy. It began with her rebelliously curly hair, the ringlets bursting out of any attempted restraint or regulation. Then the smile, a curved bow which could reach across a crowded room like an arrow. The colour red in her bangles, in her vermilion bindi; the colour of strength, of Shakti. We met often during her years in Delhi, during seminars and readings, or at the India International Centre, and she would always come up with a warm, double edged compliment that would leave me smiling too. This sense of vitality and engagement marked all that Indira Goswami embarked upon. As a scholar, an academic, a translator, a poet, novelist and activist, she brought passion, belief and engagement to all that she did.

Popularly known as Mamoni baideo or Mamoni Raisom Goswami to her Assamese admirers, she was born in Guwahati and remained true to her roots even though her writing was inspired by and located in the many other places she encountered in life's journey. Her first story was published when she was thirteen. With an admitted tendency to depression, she lived on the knife's edge as an adolescent. Her husband, Madhavan Raisom Iyenger, was killed in a car accident just eighteen months after they were married. She began writing seriously, and published Ahiron and Chenabar Sot (The Chenab's Current). Her experiences as a widow, and a research stint in Vrindavan, led to the publication of Nilakanthi Braja (The Blue-necked God), which interrogated the position of widows in Vrindavan and in Hindu society. Goswami's interest in Ramayana studies led to a comparative examination of the Tulsidas Ramayana and the medieval Axamiya Ramayana of Madhava Kandali in Ramayana from Ganga to Brahmaputra.

It was after this phase, while Indira Goswami was the head of the Assamese department at Delhi University, that our occasional but illuminating friendship began. Both widowed young, both women writers, we shared an unspoken sympathy. I read Dotal Hatir Uye Khuwa Howdah (The Moth Eaten Howdah of a Tusker) when it appeared in English translation. She was by then recognised as a serious literary figure, and received the Sahitya Akademi award in 1982 and the Jnanpith award in 2000. Mamoni refused the Padma Shri in 2002 for reasons of political conviction. In 2008, she was conferred the Principal Prince Claus Award, a major honour to a unique writer, activist, and political mediator.

In 2009, Dr Malashri Lal and I published the co-edited anthology, In Search of Sita – Revisting Mythology. The book included a dialogue with Indira Goswami on 'Ramayana, The Human Story'. In the conversation, she spoke of her early interest in tantra, and in Sufi poetry, especially the work of Mullah Masiha, who lived and wrote in Jehangir's time. She spoke of the books she was working on - The Journey of Ravana and Thengfakhri, the story of a Bodo woman who was appointed as a tax collector by the British, gathered from oral narratives.

Before that, Indira Goswami had spoken forcefully at the first Neemrana International Literature Festival on Assam and Assamese writing. To quote: “My state, Assam, had produced some very beautiful writings long ago. Outsiders are very ignorant of Assam... Historical writings flourished in Assam from 1224. These history books are like fiction, in the sense that there are narratives about kings and queens, including one queen, Phuleswari, who was a temple dancer. In the Ramayana which was translated into Assamese in the 14th century, Rama is not a God. He is just a human being; he is a very good king.

“Khushwant Singh has said there are no writings on nature in Indian languages. But I have written a novel about rhinos. You will be surprised to know that once upon a time, the Assamese people used to plough their land with the help of rhinos. Then I wrote a novel on the elephants. In my childhood, I had an elephant as my playmate. Gradually he ran amok, killed a villager, and was shot dead before our eyes. The howdah of the elephant became a symbol in my novel...”

The last time I spoke to my friend and fellow writer was two years ago, to invite her to attend the Jaipur Literature Festival. She agreed, but then backed out because of her ill health. “I wish I was better, Namita,” she said, “then I would have come.”

Writers live, travel, and continue living in inexplicable ways, through their books, through translations, through metaphors and refracted images. Their journeys do not end easily but continue, always, in strange and unexpected directions. So will Mamoni Goswami’s. 

LIFE and TIMES

Birth: On 14 November 1942 in a traditional Vaishnavite family that headed a xattra (monastery) at Amranga village in South Kamrup where she spent most of her childhood. 

Education: BA in 1960 from Cotton College in Guwahati with major in Assamese, MA in 1963 and PhD in 1973. Several honorary D Litt degrees. 

Marriage: Married Madhaven Raisom Ayengar, an engineer, in 1965. He died in an accident in 1967 in Kashmir, 18 months after marriage. She was in her 20s. 

Aftermath of husband’s death: Widowhood cast a dark shadow on her. Once, she shut herself in a small room in Goalpara and attempted suicide.  

Vrindavan: She spent two years in Vrindavan amidst the Radhaswami widows as a researcher.  

Delhi: After joining the Modern Indian Languages and Linguistics Department at the University of Delhi, she wrote most of her greatest works. 

As peace mediator: Having lost relatives to the Assam violence and after visiting ULFA camps and families, she initiated the peace process between the Government of India and the ULFA.  

Illness: Suffered from pneumonia with several complications and admitted to Gauhati Medical College on 12 February 2011. She later slipped into a com

"A DEEPLY HUMAN WRITER" : U R Ananthamurthy

Padma Bhushan U R Ananthamurthy speaks to Uddipana Goswami about the childish innocence he saw in Indira Goswami

Indira Goswami, for me, is not just a writer from Assam but truly an Indian writer, one who is important for every language in India. She is also one of the greatest women writers ever produced because in her writings there is nothing like an excessive ideological approach as we find in some women writers. She is open to experiences and deeply human – I will not say feminine or masculine, but deeply human – and she has lived a life of varied experiences.

I have had long talks with her because she married a South Indian. In her lifetime, she has gone through whatever pain and sorrow that a woman can go through, but there was no bitterness at all in her.

And when she took up the big political task of bringing peace to Assam, I remember telling her to be careful because innocent as she is, she may be misused by either the government or by the rebels. I warned her because I knew that neither side is fully dependable, and they might try to use her for their own ends.

There are many instances when I remember her concern and her affection. She had come to Karnataka once to stay with a relation of hers, one of our elders who is also a very great writer of the Kannada language named Maasthi Venkatesha Iyengar. He had also won the Jnanpith award. There was a special occasion organised to felicitate her and I remember her asking me sweetly and very innocently, like a schoolgirl almost, to speak on that occasion.

I have known her for quite some time. As the president of Sahitya Akademi I had invited her as a speaker many times, and I met her often in Delhi. We have also travelled together and talked a lot. She would tell me about her life and the plight of the widows in Vrindavan.

She was so open, as if there was nothing to hide about her life. I wish all of us were like her. I can never forget her, her kindness.

Why is Indira Goswami ‘great’? - Aruni Kashyap

Writer Aruni Kashyap says the greatness of Indira Goswami cannot be questioned and tells us exactly why

The author 
who made us dream 
of distant lands 
was also a figure 
of extreme
curiosity  for us.
Assam listens when she speaks

In 2004, a friend of mine asked me a question in Delhi: “Why is Indira Goswami so great a writer?” His introduction to Mamoni baideo’s works was through her English translations – Pages Stained with Blood, The Man from Chinnamasta and The Moth Eaten Howdah of a Tusker. I found myself fumbling for a reply. I tried defending my weak statement – she has influenced the style of many budding writers, it is she who has introduced themes that were never before explored in Assamese literature, and she is difficult to translate.

He expected a literary reply –  how she has modified the tradition of Assamese literature, and what is behind her undisputed position in Indian literature that her name is taken with the likes of Mahasweta Devi and UR Ananthamurthy. In a single or series of statements, it is difficult to capture the life of an author who is to Assamese literature what Bhupen Hazarika is to the cultural domain of Assam. She is what Toni Morrison is to America: when she speaks, Assam listens.

Mamoni Goswami’s works were not my first introduction to Assamese fiction. I read, from a very early age, forbidden novels as I used to grope around in the book shelves in the almirahs of my parents. I remember, when I picked up Nirupoma Borgohain’s Iparor Ghor Xiparor Ghor, my mother confiscated it because it has stories about women that a fifth-grader was not supposed to read. I rebelled and read everything in the Assamese edition of The Moth Eaten Howdah of a Tusker, without knowing what a howdah was. I had not asked anybody if the author was Assamese. What I inquired was: how come I never heard of the title ‘Raisom’ before? Raisom made me curious, and even more curious was the word howdah. I remember crying for a long time when Giribala burnt herself to death. It took that boy of sixth grade a long time to recuperate from the shock. I was annoyed with the author because she ‘killed’ Giribala.

Mamoni Raisom Goswami brought the worlds outside Assam to the realm of Assamese literature, the way Bhupen Hazarika made us dream about the grave of Mark Twain, the banks of the Mississippi and of Paris and Austria with his songs. We have Dhirendranath Borthakur’s Bai Saheba set in Jhansi against the Sepoy Mutiny, Deben Acharya’s Jongom located in the forests of Burma and Syed Abdul Malik’s novel Dukhan Nadi aru Ekhon Marubhumi set in Lucknow. But Goswami’s novels didn’t exoticise distant lands like her precursors: she brought the horrors home in evocative language. Her novel set in Vrindavan is a critical look at Hinduism filtered through the life of abandoned widows, known as Radheshyamis. Chehnabar Sot is set against the beautiful locale of Kashmir, but only to narrate a tale of the hapless condition of the working class people of the 1960’s hired by different companies to build aqueducts in the then peaceful Kashmir Valley. Similar in tone and theme is Mamore Dhora Tarowal. After the publication of her autobiography, it has become next to impossible to separate her fiction from her life. Both look like two facets of the same coin. The woman who had risen like the phoenix: the two suicide attempts she describes in her autobiography are often compared with the depressive streaks that her rebellious and complex self met with. Saudamini’s suicide mentioned in Nilakanthi Braja seems to mirror her desires when she lived as a widow in Vrindavan.

Critical reputation came undisputed to Goswami after she won the Sahitya Akademi award, but popularity started chasing her when books were written on her tragic and eventful life and articles were published on her life.

The author who made us dream of distant lands was also a figure of extreme curiosity for the residents of Assam. Perhaps that is why Assam listens when she speaks. Perhaps that is why Assam felt that if the reigns of the peace process remained with her, the process would remain untainted even within the murky alleys of Indian politics. As someone from the generation who never knew what it is to live outside the shadow of the gun, I did not know why Mamoni baideo is so great till the time I moved to Delhi. I got my artillery to argue about her greatness only in subsequent years. I wonder what my friend had thought when he saw my expression – because it was so obvious to me that she is a great author. There is no need to question the fact.

POINT BLANK - Preaching to the little people: Children’s and YA literature : Arup Kumar Dutta

The future of children’s literature is very grim in Assam and the rest of the region, author Arup Kumar Dutta tells Siba K Gogoi in this interview.

The electronic media is destroying the reading habit. Youngsters today watch television and surf the Internet rather than read books. The visual media has broadened children’s horizons, making it necessary for writers to change their style of writing and adopt more contemporary themes. This is what writer Arup Kumar Dutta has to say, seeing the declining reading habit in the Northeast and elsewhere.

American-born British novelist Andrew Rosenheim has predicted that the printed word will become extinct in the next half-century. Dutta also thinks like Rosenheim and believes that the format of the book will change drastically in the coming decades. This change, he says, will be driven by children drifting away from the written medium. Dutta,the author of such  critically acclaimed books as Kaziranga Trail,The Blind Witness, Smack and The Boy Who Became King, is distressed by young people getting disenchanted with the world of books. He feels that things are not looking good for the future of children’s literature in Assam or the Northeast.

In an exclusive interview with Seven Sisters Post, Dutta speaks about the responsibility of writers in modern times and calls for concerted efforts by authors, publishers, parents, teachers and the government to promote reading habits in the region and to prepare young readers for changes that will come in the world of books.

“The book is not going to survive in its present form. The play of human imagination will be there, but in a different format. The book will be digitalised. The phenomenon of e-book has already arrived. Classroom teaching will change, with computers replacing books. Finally, visuals will supplant words," he says.

According to Dutta, writers, teachers, parents, publishers, the government and educational institutions — especially vernacular-medium government schools — are to blame for youngsters not being keen on reading books.

If parents maintain a culture
of reading, their children will
automatically take to reading books

He warns that authors should not take writing children’s books as an amateurish job, and that they need to adopt a thorough professional approach. “Children and youngsters today are so much exposed to the visual media. Their grasp of global affairs through technology is vast. This has changed their tastes. Writers need to write accordingly,” he says.

Dutta maintains that it is the responsibility of writers and publishers to enhance the quality and quantity of children’s books. “There is no dearth of writers in the region. Publishers are not very keen on bringing out quality books for children because of rising production costs and low returns. 

However, they should not always have profitability on their mind.”

Charity begins at home. Similarly, parents have a big responsibility towards inculcating reading habits in their children. “Parents are the first teachers of children. At an impressionable age, children tend to emulate their parents. If parents maintain a culture of reading, their children will automatically take to reading books. If a household gives more importance to TV, how can you expect children in that household to cultivate the reading habit?”  says Dutta.

The situation at school, he says, further compounds the problem. “Teachers and educational institutions are seen laying more emphasis on textbooks at the expense of extra-curricular books because of the pressure of producing good results.”

What should the government do to improve this situation? “The government is setting up Assam Children’s Book Trust to help publish affordable books for children. It should also extend subsidies to private publishers so that they can bring out good quality books,” he suggests.

On the crucial issue of a writer’s social responsibility, Dutta says, “All writers have social responsibility. Authors of children’s books have to shoulder it to a greater degree as their readers are highly impressionable. A writer has to first know what he or she wants to write about. For example, racial discrimination, class divisions and excessive violence should be left out of books meant for children.”

 “What makes me unhappy is that writers of children’s books have a tendency to preach. If the writer has any message for his young readers, it should come across spontaneously,”  he concludes.

Amid the growing perception that the future of children’s literature is gloomy in the region, Barkweaver, a Norway-based publishing house, has brought out a compilation of folktales from Nagaland at the initiative of a Naga writer. Oluguti Toluguti, a collection of Indian children’s rhymes published by Tulika Publications, also includes rhymes from the region.

Dutta, however, points out that Barkweaver’s books or Oluguti Toluguti does not mean that anything significant is happening in the sphere of children’s literature. “One swallow does not make a summer. Things like grandmother’s tales and rhymes are of little interest to today’s children. Moreover, folktales don’t sell these days. The future of children’s literature is very grim in Assam and the rest of the region,” says Dutta.

On the current scene of children’s literature in the Northeast, he says, “Assam and Manipur have strong traditions of writings for children. Efforts are on to help children’s literature grow in Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. Arunachal Pradesh still has an oral literary tradition.”

Dutta is the president of the North-East Writers’ Forum. He says the forum is doing whatever it can to revive people’s interest in literature.

 “The purpose of the North-East Writers’ Forum is to provide a common platform for writers and translators from eight northeastern states, including Sikkim, to interact and exchange ideas. It also gives an opportunity to aspiring writers to meet and listen to established writers from the region and other countries.”

He referred to the holding of the first Asia Literary Festival by the North-East Writers’ Forum in Guwahati. He says Anwesa is doing a commendable job by promoting children’s books in the Northeast. Anwesa is a book promotion group in the region.

Dutta’s favourite book is his own The Blind Witness. He is happy that it has been printed in Braille in Japan to enable blind students to read it.