'Kali! I meditate on thee!’ is a mythopoetic attempt at chronicling the spiritual aura of non-dua... more 'Kali! I meditate on thee!’ is a mythopoetic attempt at chronicling the spiritual aura of non-dualism that I’d experienced whilst meditating on a cremation ground in my maternal uncle’s village in Bengal. Whereas, ‘Waiting for Indra’ while trying to breathe life into the frescoes of the Sigiriya rock fortress in Sri Lanka, gives voice to the apsarās, who often lacked agency in ancient tales.
The first poem, "Meditating on Ganges at 1 A.M. in Kashi," is a mythopoetic attempt at chroniclin... more The first poem, "Meditating on Ganges at 1 A.M. in Kashi," is a mythopoetic attempt at chronicling the spiritual aura of non-dualism that I'd experienced in Kashi (also called Varanasi). The second poem, "The Convalescent Flâneur," reflects upon the ecological anxieties of global warming and the anxieties of traveling on public transport in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the last poem, "The Flâneur’s Spring-song," is a piece that is illustrative of the joy that comes with the arrival of the spring season after a long-morose wintry season.
This talk was given by the author upon being invited for a Guest Lecture on ‘Literature and Secul... more This talk was given by the author upon being invited for a Guest Lecture on ‘Literature and Secularism’ by Amity Institute of English Studies and Research, Amity University on 21st April, 2022. The talk covers historical relevance of secularism and how the literary works of Rohinton Mistry, Gunisha Kaur and Rakhshanda Jalil are inter-woven with the concept of secularism and the vehement need for latter as well.
In its very essence, nonsense literature subverts the cultural hegemonic tropes of a society. It ... more In its very essence, nonsense literature subverts the cultural hegemonic tropes of a society. It fundamentally uses humor in caricaturing those tropes to evoke anti-establishment ethos. Rabindranath Tagore’s “Khapchara” (1936) dissects a multitude of issues from colonial Bengal, falling under the larger spectrum of socio-cultural themes. The marginalization of ‘nonsense literature’ as a literary space marks its existence as a heterotopia. Michel Foucault defines heterotopia as “counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted.” This paper seeks to trace how Tagorean nonsense acted as a heterotopia, demolishing certain entrenched ways of comprehending ‘sense’ in colonial times, eventually highlighting new uncharted ways of understanding that very ‘sense’ and how his ‘nonsense’ still holds extreme relevance in making ‘sense’ out of the neoliberal Indian society in the twenty-first century.
This essay, "Hungry Hearts: An Appetite for Aesthetics," examines the deep relationship between s... more This essay, "Hungry Hearts: An Appetite for Aesthetics," examines the deep relationship between spirituality and aesthetics by plunging into the depths of spiritual materialism. I trace the evolution of my spiritual consciousness, seeking understanding and enlightenment through the works of aesthetes such as Abhinavagupta, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Baba Ram Dass and Neem Karoli Baba.
A personal narrative essay that traces the anxiety of the increasing loss of multilingual culture... more A personal narrative essay that traces the anxiety of the increasing loss of multilingual culture in the Indian subcontinent, from the secular lens of a flâneur.
Graphic Literature, as a genre, was born in the European continent.
In 1833, the first such piece... more Graphic Literature, as a genre, was born in the European continent. In 1833, the first such piece dawned upon the readers in French, ‘Histoire de M. Jabot’ by Rodolphe Töppfer. Yet, taking nearly a hundred years to catch the fancy of mass-readers. The Belgian cartoonist, Hergé’s Tintin comics and American superhero comics like the Batman, Superman brought about the revolutionary change in the sales of comic books. In India, mythology and folk-lore inspired graphic literature like the Amar Chitra Katha and Raj Comics existed. This paper will trace the parallels of history of Graphic Literature in the West and India and how some creators deconstructed the genre with their phenomenal works. For example, Moore and Gibbons’ ‘Watchmen’ (deconstructing the myth of American superheroes), Jodorowsky and Moebius’ The Incal series (deconstruction of sci-fi tropes) and Orijit Sen’s ‘River of Stories’ (deconstructing the hegemonic media’s reports of tribals displaced by dam projects).
Narrating Art Forms Of Northeast India: Mapping Literary Responses, 2024
Celestial songs, also known as Borgeets (Assamese: বৰগীত), are a group of poetic songs that are u... more Celestial songs, also known as Borgeets (Assamese: বৰগীত), are a group of poetic songs that are usually set to particular ragas but not always to any particular tala. These hymns were composed in the 15th and 16th centuries, during the time when the entire Indian subcontinent was engulfed by the Bhakti movement’s saint-scholars such as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (Bengal), Basava (Karnataka), Kabir (North India), and Srimanta Sankardeva and Madhavdeva (North East India).
The Borgeets are used to open prayer sessions in monasteries, such as Satra and Namghar, that practice the Ekasarana Dharma. By emphasizing devotion (bhakti) to Lord Krishna in the form of communal listening (shravan) and chanting his name and deeds (kirtan), Ekasarana Dharma challenged the hegemony of Hindu orthodoxy, which continues to this day in Assam.
The Brajavali dialect, which is different from the Brajabuli dialect utilized in the context of the Vaishnavite movements of Bengal and Odisha, is used to write the Borgeets. Dr. Sukumar Sen elucidates how "Assamese Brajabuli seems to have developed through direct connection with Mithila". Brajavali itself is an artificial language in which Assamese vocables and pronouns have been given Maithili inflections.
Both existing Hindu and non-Hindu populations were drawn into Ekasarana Dharma’s egalitarian fold due to its simplicity and accessibility. The new converts are still initiated into the faith through a ritual known as xoron-lowa (taking shelter). This Bhakti movement challenged the hierarchical systems upheld by Brahmanical orthodoxy by embracing all castes and communities.
Sankardeva and Madhavdeva invited people from various backgrounds to join in religious rituals as part of their advocacy for the abolition of caste-based prejudice. Translations of sacred scriptures (such as Srimad Bhagavatam) furthered the democratization of access to religious knowledge by diminishing the hegemony of Brahmanical Sanskrit texts in terms of interpretive authority.
This paper seeks to trace how this de-centralization of the pre-existing orthodoxical culture occurred via Borgeets, who had a revolutionary role in undermining the hegemony of the Hindu orthodoxical fold by promoting inclusion and local cultural integration, besides transforming Assam's religious landscape into a more inclusive and diversified spiritual heritage.
The “Kāmasūtra” was originally written by Vātsyāyana as a manual on the nature of love and matter... more The “Kāmasūtra” was originally written by Vātsyāyana as a manual on the nature of love and matters relevant to the pleasure-oriented capacities of human life. The first translations of the text into the English language were carried out in the colonial Victorian period. It was commissioned by Sir Richard Burton, who, instead of translating it, edited it to suit Victorian sensibilities and moralities. The act of translation here inherently becomes an act of ‘epistemic violence’ as the noted postcolonial critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak talked of in “Can the subaltern speak?”
This ‘epistemic violence’ can be traced to how patriarchal values act as the binary of colonialism in building a discourse to oppress indigenous, female, and queer subjects, erasing their identities. Language gets subjected to universals of "progress" through imperial grammars woven into discourses of ontological determinism and epistemic fixation, perpetuating instrumental dominance, otherness, and subalternity. Noted Indologist Wendy Doniger wrote about the erasure of the voice of women in Burton’s edition: "It robs women of their voices, turning direct quotes into indirect quotes... erasing the vivid presence of the many women who speak in the Kamasutra." The agency of women in ancient India was diminished because of Burton's act of removing parts, as he deemed them suitable, from the original Kāmasūtra that acknowledged women’s agency in matters of love and intimacy.
Furthermore, there’s a clear mention of “third sexuality” (Tritiya Prakriti) in the original “Kāmasūtra,” which is mistranslated by Burton as “eunuchs.” Doniger comments on it: “Burton’s ‘eunuchs’ are, rather, the product of ‘Orientalism’: the depiction of ‘Orientals’ as simultaneously oversexed and feminized.” This paper seeks to trace the colonial erasures of the queer and women agencies in the translated Kāmasūtra, emphasizing Burton's translation as an act of ‘epistemic violence.’
'Kali! I meditate on thee!’ is a mythopoetic attempt at chronicling the spiritual aura of non-dua... more 'Kali! I meditate on thee!’ is a mythopoetic attempt at chronicling the spiritual aura of non-dualism that I’d experienced whilst meditating on a cremation ground in my maternal uncle’s village in Bengal. Whereas, ‘Waiting for Indra’ while trying to breathe life into the frescoes of the Sigiriya rock fortress in Sri Lanka, gives voice to the apsarās, who often lacked agency in ancient tales.
The first poem, "Meditating on Ganges at 1 A.M. in Kashi," is a mythopoetic attempt at chroniclin... more The first poem, "Meditating on Ganges at 1 A.M. in Kashi," is a mythopoetic attempt at chronicling the spiritual aura of non-dualism that I'd experienced in Kashi (also called Varanasi). The second poem, "The Convalescent Flâneur," reflects upon the ecological anxieties of global warming and the anxieties of traveling on public transport in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the last poem, "The Flâneur’s Spring-song," is a piece that is illustrative of the joy that comes with the arrival of the spring season after a long-morose wintry season.
This talk was given by the author upon being invited for a Guest Lecture on ‘Literature and Secul... more This talk was given by the author upon being invited for a Guest Lecture on ‘Literature and Secularism’ by Amity Institute of English Studies and Research, Amity University on 21st April, 2022. The talk covers historical relevance of secularism and how the literary works of Rohinton Mistry, Gunisha Kaur and Rakhshanda Jalil are inter-woven with the concept of secularism and the vehement need for latter as well.
In its very essence, nonsense literature subverts the cultural hegemonic tropes of a society. It ... more In its very essence, nonsense literature subverts the cultural hegemonic tropes of a society. It fundamentally uses humor in caricaturing those tropes to evoke anti-establishment ethos. Rabindranath Tagore’s “Khapchara” (1936) dissects a multitude of issues from colonial Bengal, falling under the larger spectrum of socio-cultural themes. The marginalization of ‘nonsense literature’ as a literary space marks its existence as a heterotopia. Michel Foucault defines heterotopia as “counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted.” This paper seeks to trace how Tagorean nonsense acted as a heterotopia, demolishing certain entrenched ways of comprehending ‘sense’ in colonial times, eventually highlighting new uncharted ways of understanding that very ‘sense’ and how his ‘nonsense’ still holds extreme relevance in making ‘sense’ out of the neoliberal Indian society in the twenty-first century.
This essay, "Hungry Hearts: An Appetite for Aesthetics," examines the deep relationship between s... more This essay, "Hungry Hearts: An Appetite for Aesthetics," examines the deep relationship between spirituality and aesthetics by plunging into the depths of spiritual materialism. I trace the evolution of my spiritual consciousness, seeking understanding and enlightenment through the works of aesthetes such as Abhinavagupta, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Baba Ram Dass and Neem Karoli Baba.
A personal narrative essay that traces the anxiety of the increasing loss of multilingual culture... more A personal narrative essay that traces the anxiety of the increasing loss of multilingual culture in the Indian subcontinent, from the secular lens of a flâneur.
Graphic Literature, as a genre, was born in the European continent.
In 1833, the first such piece... more Graphic Literature, as a genre, was born in the European continent. In 1833, the first such piece dawned upon the readers in French, ‘Histoire de M. Jabot’ by Rodolphe Töppfer. Yet, taking nearly a hundred years to catch the fancy of mass-readers. The Belgian cartoonist, Hergé’s Tintin comics and American superhero comics like the Batman, Superman brought about the revolutionary change in the sales of comic books. In India, mythology and folk-lore inspired graphic literature like the Amar Chitra Katha and Raj Comics existed. This paper will trace the parallels of history of Graphic Literature in the West and India and how some creators deconstructed the genre with their phenomenal works. For example, Moore and Gibbons’ ‘Watchmen’ (deconstructing the myth of American superheroes), Jodorowsky and Moebius’ The Incal series (deconstruction of sci-fi tropes) and Orijit Sen’s ‘River of Stories’ (deconstructing the hegemonic media’s reports of tribals displaced by dam projects).
Narrating Art Forms Of Northeast India: Mapping Literary Responses, 2024
Celestial songs, also known as Borgeets (Assamese: বৰগীত), are a group of poetic songs that are u... more Celestial songs, also known as Borgeets (Assamese: বৰগীত), are a group of poetic songs that are usually set to particular ragas but not always to any particular tala. These hymns were composed in the 15th and 16th centuries, during the time when the entire Indian subcontinent was engulfed by the Bhakti movement’s saint-scholars such as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (Bengal), Basava (Karnataka), Kabir (North India), and Srimanta Sankardeva and Madhavdeva (North East India).
The Borgeets are used to open prayer sessions in monasteries, such as Satra and Namghar, that practice the Ekasarana Dharma. By emphasizing devotion (bhakti) to Lord Krishna in the form of communal listening (shravan) and chanting his name and deeds (kirtan), Ekasarana Dharma challenged the hegemony of Hindu orthodoxy, which continues to this day in Assam.
The Brajavali dialect, which is different from the Brajabuli dialect utilized in the context of the Vaishnavite movements of Bengal and Odisha, is used to write the Borgeets. Dr. Sukumar Sen elucidates how "Assamese Brajabuli seems to have developed through direct connection with Mithila". Brajavali itself is an artificial language in which Assamese vocables and pronouns have been given Maithili inflections.
Both existing Hindu and non-Hindu populations were drawn into Ekasarana Dharma’s egalitarian fold due to its simplicity and accessibility. The new converts are still initiated into the faith through a ritual known as xoron-lowa (taking shelter). This Bhakti movement challenged the hierarchical systems upheld by Brahmanical orthodoxy by embracing all castes and communities.
Sankardeva and Madhavdeva invited people from various backgrounds to join in religious rituals as part of their advocacy for the abolition of caste-based prejudice. Translations of sacred scriptures (such as Srimad Bhagavatam) furthered the democratization of access to religious knowledge by diminishing the hegemony of Brahmanical Sanskrit texts in terms of interpretive authority.
This paper seeks to trace how this de-centralization of the pre-existing orthodoxical culture occurred via Borgeets, who had a revolutionary role in undermining the hegemony of the Hindu orthodoxical fold by promoting inclusion and local cultural integration, besides transforming Assam's religious landscape into a more inclusive and diversified spiritual heritage.
The “Kāmasūtra” was originally written by Vātsyāyana as a manual on the nature of love and matter... more The “Kāmasūtra” was originally written by Vātsyāyana as a manual on the nature of love and matters relevant to the pleasure-oriented capacities of human life. The first translations of the text into the English language were carried out in the colonial Victorian period. It was commissioned by Sir Richard Burton, who, instead of translating it, edited it to suit Victorian sensibilities and moralities. The act of translation here inherently becomes an act of ‘epistemic violence’ as the noted postcolonial critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak talked of in “Can the subaltern speak?”
This ‘epistemic violence’ can be traced to how patriarchal values act as the binary of colonialism in building a discourse to oppress indigenous, female, and queer subjects, erasing their identities. Language gets subjected to universals of "progress" through imperial grammars woven into discourses of ontological determinism and epistemic fixation, perpetuating instrumental dominance, otherness, and subalternity. Noted Indologist Wendy Doniger wrote about the erasure of the voice of women in Burton’s edition: "It robs women of their voices, turning direct quotes into indirect quotes... erasing the vivid presence of the many women who speak in the Kamasutra." The agency of women in ancient India was diminished because of Burton's act of removing parts, as he deemed them suitable, from the original Kāmasūtra that acknowledged women’s agency in matters of love and intimacy.
Furthermore, there’s a clear mention of “third sexuality” (Tritiya Prakriti) in the original “Kāmasūtra,” which is mistranslated by Burton as “eunuchs.” Doniger comments on it: “Burton’s ‘eunuchs’ are, rather, the product of ‘Orientalism’: the depiction of ‘Orientals’ as simultaneously oversexed and feminized.” This paper seeks to trace the colonial erasures of the queer and women agencies in the translated Kāmasūtra, emphasizing Burton's translation as an act of ‘epistemic violence.’
Uploads
Talks by Abhik Ganguly
Papers by Abhik Ganguly
In 1833, the first such piece dawned upon the readers in French,
‘Histoire de M. Jabot’ by Rodolphe Töppfer. Yet, taking nearly a
hundred years to catch the fancy of mass-readers. The Belgian
cartoonist, Hergé’s Tintin comics and American superhero comics
like the Batman, Superman brought about the revolutionary change
in the sales of comic books. In India, mythology and folk-lore
inspired graphic literature like the Amar Chitra Katha and Raj
Comics existed. This paper will trace the parallels of history of
Graphic Literature in the West and India and how some creators
deconstructed the genre with their phenomenal works. For
example, Moore and Gibbons’ ‘Watchmen’ (deconstructing the
myth of American superheroes), Jodorowsky and Moebius’ The
Incal series (deconstruction of sci-fi tropes) and Orijit Sen’s ‘River
of Stories’ (deconstructing the hegemonic media’s reports of tribals
displaced by dam projects).
Books by Abhik Ganguly
The Borgeets are used to open prayer sessions in monasteries, such as Satra and Namghar, that practice the Ekasarana Dharma. By emphasizing devotion (bhakti) to Lord Krishna in the form of communal listening (shravan) and chanting his name and deeds (kirtan), Ekasarana Dharma challenged the hegemony of Hindu orthodoxy, which continues to this day in Assam.
The Brajavali dialect, which is different from the Brajabuli dialect utilized in the context of the Vaishnavite movements of Bengal and Odisha, is used to write the Borgeets. Dr. Sukumar Sen elucidates how "Assamese Brajabuli seems to have developed through direct connection with Mithila". Brajavali itself is an artificial language in which Assamese vocables and pronouns have been given Maithili inflections.
Both existing Hindu and non-Hindu populations were drawn into Ekasarana Dharma’s egalitarian fold due to its simplicity and accessibility. The new converts are still initiated into the faith through a ritual known as xoron-lowa (taking shelter). This Bhakti movement challenged the hierarchical systems upheld by Brahmanical orthodoxy by embracing all castes and communities.
Sankardeva and Madhavdeva invited people from various backgrounds to join in religious rituals as part of their advocacy for the abolition of caste-based prejudice. Translations of sacred scriptures (such as Srimad Bhagavatam) furthered the democratization of access to religious knowledge by diminishing the hegemony of Brahmanical Sanskrit texts in terms of interpretive authority.
This paper seeks to trace how this de-centralization of the pre-existing orthodoxical culture occurred via Borgeets, who had a revolutionary role in undermining the hegemony of the Hindu orthodoxical fold by promoting inclusion and local cultural integration, besides transforming Assam's religious landscape into a more inclusive and diversified spiritual heritage.
This ‘epistemic violence’ can be traced to how patriarchal values act as the binary of colonialism in building a discourse to oppress indigenous, female, and queer subjects, erasing their identities. Language gets subjected to universals of "progress" through imperial grammars woven into discourses of ontological determinism and epistemic fixation, perpetuating instrumental dominance, otherness, and subalternity. Noted Indologist Wendy Doniger wrote about the erasure of the voice of women in Burton’s edition: "It robs women of their voices, turning direct quotes into indirect quotes... erasing the vivid presence of the many women who speak in the Kamasutra." The agency of women in ancient India was diminished because of Burton's act of removing parts, as he deemed them suitable, from the original Kāmasūtra that acknowledged women’s agency in matters of love and intimacy.
Furthermore, there’s a clear mention of “third sexuality” (Tritiya Prakriti) in the original “Kāmasūtra,” which is mistranslated by Burton as “eunuchs.” Doniger comments on it: “Burton’s ‘eunuchs’ are, rather, the product of ‘Orientalism’: the depiction of ‘Orientals’ as simultaneously oversexed and feminized.” This paper seeks to trace the colonial erasures of the queer and women agencies in the translated Kāmasūtra, emphasizing Burton's translation as an act of ‘epistemic violence.’
In 1833, the first such piece dawned upon the readers in French,
‘Histoire de M. Jabot’ by Rodolphe Töppfer. Yet, taking nearly a
hundred years to catch the fancy of mass-readers. The Belgian
cartoonist, Hergé’s Tintin comics and American superhero comics
like the Batman, Superman brought about the revolutionary change
in the sales of comic books. In India, mythology and folk-lore
inspired graphic literature like the Amar Chitra Katha and Raj
Comics existed. This paper will trace the parallels of history of
Graphic Literature in the West and India and how some creators
deconstructed the genre with their phenomenal works. For
example, Moore and Gibbons’ ‘Watchmen’ (deconstructing the
myth of American superheroes), Jodorowsky and Moebius’ The
Incal series (deconstruction of sci-fi tropes) and Orijit Sen’s ‘River
of Stories’ (deconstructing the hegemonic media’s reports of tribals
displaced by dam projects).
The Borgeets are used to open prayer sessions in monasteries, such as Satra and Namghar, that practice the Ekasarana Dharma. By emphasizing devotion (bhakti) to Lord Krishna in the form of communal listening (shravan) and chanting his name and deeds (kirtan), Ekasarana Dharma challenged the hegemony of Hindu orthodoxy, which continues to this day in Assam.
The Brajavali dialect, which is different from the Brajabuli dialect utilized in the context of the Vaishnavite movements of Bengal and Odisha, is used to write the Borgeets. Dr. Sukumar Sen elucidates how "Assamese Brajabuli seems to have developed through direct connection with Mithila". Brajavali itself is an artificial language in which Assamese vocables and pronouns have been given Maithili inflections.
Both existing Hindu and non-Hindu populations were drawn into Ekasarana Dharma’s egalitarian fold due to its simplicity and accessibility. The new converts are still initiated into the faith through a ritual known as xoron-lowa (taking shelter). This Bhakti movement challenged the hierarchical systems upheld by Brahmanical orthodoxy by embracing all castes and communities.
Sankardeva and Madhavdeva invited people from various backgrounds to join in religious rituals as part of their advocacy for the abolition of caste-based prejudice. Translations of sacred scriptures (such as Srimad Bhagavatam) furthered the democratization of access to religious knowledge by diminishing the hegemony of Brahmanical Sanskrit texts in terms of interpretive authority.
This paper seeks to trace how this de-centralization of the pre-existing orthodoxical culture occurred via Borgeets, who had a revolutionary role in undermining the hegemony of the Hindu orthodoxical fold by promoting inclusion and local cultural integration, besides transforming Assam's religious landscape into a more inclusive and diversified spiritual heritage.
This ‘epistemic violence’ can be traced to how patriarchal values act as the binary of colonialism in building a discourse to oppress indigenous, female, and queer subjects, erasing their identities. Language gets subjected to universals of "progress" through imperial grammars woven into discourses of ontological determinism and epistemic fixation, perpetuating instrumental dominance, otherness, and subalternity. Noted Indologist Wendy Doniger wrote about the erasure of the voice of women in Burton’s edition: "It robs women of their voices, turning direct quotes into indirect quotes... erasing the vivid presence of the many women who speak in the Kamasutra." The agency of women in ancient India was diminished because of Burton's act of removing parts, as he deemed them suitable, from the original Kāmasūtra that acknowledged women’s agency in matters of love and intimacy.
Furthermore, there’s a clear mention of “third sexuality” (Tritiya Prakriti) in the original “Kāmasūtra,” which is mistranslated by Burton as “eunuchs.” Doniger comments on it: “Burton’s ‘eunuchs’ are, rather, the product of ‘Orientalism’: the depiction of ‘Orientals’ as simultaneously oversexed and feminized.” This paper seeks to trace the colonial erasures of the queer and women agencies in the translated Kāmasūtra, emphasizing Burton's translation as an act of ‘epistemic violence.’