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| Shastidas Baul in Asannagar |
In
Asannagar, a village in Nadia district of West Bengal, Shastidas Baul can talk for hours about the philosophy of Bauls, but
he hardly has an audience now. When the Kolkata-based social enterprise Banglanatak Dot Com first began its intervention
in Nadia district in 2005, it organised several workshops for Baul singers with
Shastidas who taught these artists the basics of Baul philosophy and the
teachings of Lalan Fakir. But now, most of the villagers in Asannagar whom I
met said they simply don’t have time for such things after laboring in the
fields for the entire day. But more alarming was a very strong reaction from many
of them who said they don't feel comfortable in Shashtidas’ company. The
reasons they gave were that he is arrogant and misbehaves with people. He loses
complete self-control under the influence of alcohol and to cap it all, people
in his village now have an impression that he is a womaniser. During my conversation
with Shastidas, he proudly said, “that’s how I am different.” On being
cross-questioned, he said, “people are jealous of me. They cannot stand the
fact that I am a professional artist who has got innumerable opportunities to
perform abroad.” Interestingly, in his conversations never once did he even
mention that he was a village tailor by profession. For close to 40 years he
had a tailoring shop in the Asannagar main market area. This was revealed by
other people residing in the same village and was later corroborated by the enterprise field officer at Asannagar.
When I
first met Shastidas Baul in December 2010, he was all praise for the enterprise.
According to him, “the social enterprise has done what the government was not
able to do in so many years.” In fact, he proudly said that whenever Amitava Bhattacharya, the director of the enterprise, comes to Asannagar, he only stays
at his place and nowhere else. Interestingly, when we again met him six months
later in June 2011, his opinion had radically changed. He openly blamed Bhattacharya of indulging in favouritism. He said, “the social enterprise favours the
artists of Gorbhanga and even at other places, it wants to promote only
incompetent people.” Only six months back, Shastidas Baul had said that in
Gorbhanga, Armaan Fakir and Golam Fakir were like his brothers. Six months
later, he not only accused them of being “incompetent artists” but also went to
the extent of alienating himself from them on religious lines, blaming them of “spreading
communal feelings.”
When
we spoke to Bhattacharya, he gave us this explanation. “When our enterprise
first approached Shastidas, he wanted us to set up the resource centre at
Asannagar. He even showed us a plot of land where we could go ahead with the
construction. We believed him and assured him that things will happen according
to his plans. However, when we sat down to finalise the deal, our lawyer
pointed out that after carrying out his legal investigations, he had discovered
that the plot of land which Shastidas had earmarked for the resource centre was
in fact a piece of disputed property. Hence, we had to shift our base to
Gorbhanga where a previous ashram already existed inside the compound of Armaan
Fakir’s residence. It’s there that we constructed the new building which is now
the resource centre.” Shatidas told me that the director had given him very
high hopes. According to the Baul philosopher, Bhattacharya had promised
him, “From now on you will never look back. You will go places. I believed him.
He also gave me the opportunity to perform in France and Italy. But that was
all. After that he hardly kept in touch with me.” According Bhattacharya,
“Performance is all about teamwork. But Shastidas is extremely unpopular among
the other talented artists of his village. He has told them time and again very
categorically that if they want foreign assignments, they must accept him as
their guru. He has been telling the other villagers that it is only on his
recommendation that the enterprise will send them abroad. In other words, he
was trying to gain political mileage from his association with the social
enterprise.” Bhattacharya further commented that “these people suffer from
artists’ syndrome. This is a typical condition that artists go through
especially after they have risen to this social status from that of farmers or
agricultural labourers. The moment they get recognition as artists, the element
of professional jealousy creeps in. They start thinking of themselves as
superior to the rest of the people from the community. This is exactly what has
destroyed Shastidas as a human being. Till the time he was a village tailor (a
fact that Shastidas carefully managed not to reveal throughout our conversation)
he wasn’t cut off from his community. But the moment he got recognition as an
artist, he distanced himself from the other villagers. A person with such an
attitude will never be able to act as a good leader for his team members.”
When
I visited Shastidas for the second time, he first asked me pointblank whether I was an
agent of the enterprise or not? It was only when I convinced him that I was an
independent researcher that he offered to speak to me. Moreover, when he
introduced his team members, they were all young people, especially women who
were housewives and for whom music was just a hobby and not a profession.
Pronoti, one of the women he introduced as his team member, wasn’t a Baul
singer at all. She could sing Rabindra Sangeet (Songs of Tagore) which most
Bengali middle-class men and women learn while they are students. They cannot
be called “professional musicians” under any circumstances. But all said and
done, Shastidas does know a lot about Humanism and the philosophy of the Bauls. He
has excellent oratory and presentation skills and one can keep listening to him
for hours together. Also, in order to have his audience engaged, he keeps
asking too many questions. According to Shaktinath Jha, an authority on Bauls,
this is the dialogue technique that Lalan Fakir used to connect with
his audience. Shastidas also tries to use the same technique but according to
Jha, the difference between these two individuals is that Lalan Fakir always
knew the answers himself, but Sashtidas does not know the answers to many of
the questions that he himself asks. Hence Jha’s interpretation is that “one
must accept Sashtidas’ arguments with a pinch of salt.”
It was
at Asannagar that as a researcher I got the first glimpse of class differentiation.
By trying to hide his past, Sashtidas in fact wants to project himself as someone who
is different from the rest of the community. With the help of philosophy, he
tries to project himself as an intellectual who belongs to a different class
altogether. At the Fakiri Utsav when I conducted live interviews with Bharati
Sarkar and Basanti Das, two women Baul singers who had come to Gorbhanga for
participating in the festival along with Sashtidas, he sat through the entire
interview and often interjected and corrected whatever they were saying. When I
asked Bharati Sarkar about whether she had any problems in managing her home as
well as a professional career as a Baul singer, Sashtidas immediately answered
back by saying, “Everybody in her family is proud of the fact that I have
accepted her as my disciple. The people of my village know that I am not an
ordinary human-being; I am an enlightened person and anybody who associates
with me will achieve enlightenment.”
My
investigations further revealed that Asannagar has several talented Baul
singers like Prafulla Biswas, Nikhil Biswas, Ranjit Gosain and Nikhil Gayen. But
Sashtidas never speaks highly of any of them. His own brother-in-law Biren Das
Baul is regarded as a doyen among Baul singers in his region. However,
Sashtidas dismisses him as an alcoholic. When I asked him about Biren Das Baul
his answer was, “Everyone cannot be a Baul. Biren Das begins his day with alcohol
and the entire day he is drunk. He is never in his senses. How can such an
intoxicated individual be a Baul? I feel ashamed to say that he is my
relative.” Sashtidas wanted to climb up the social ladder with the help of the
enterprise. His disillusionment with the enterprise reveals his frustration at
not having achieved what he wanted to do. In June 2012 when I met him at
Asannagar, he told me that he had started his own non-governmental organisation
through which he wanted to promote “genuine” artists rather than the
“incompetent” ones patronised by the enterprise. For that he was working with
Sumana Hazra, a Kolkata-based documentary filmmaker, who is also conducting
workshops with schoolchildren where they are taught various creative things
like music, dance, pottery, puppet-making etc. by folk artists. But when I
spoke to Hazra even she was not very hopeful of this new venture. “I wanted to
start a school at Asannagar, but Sashtidas has not made my task easy at all.
Rather, he has already delayed our project by a couple of months. The problem
with people like Sashtidas is that they think since we are making documentary
films, we have a lot of money. They don’t realise how hard it is for us to
raise the money. Although Sashtidas has not stated it in as many words, but I
think he is probably waiting for me to pay him a substantial amount before he
joins me in this work. This is exactly how good initiatives are killed.”
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