সম্প্রদায়গত সামাজিক বিভাজন এবং বৈষ্ণব “অপসম্প্রদায়”: ভক্তিবিনোদ ঠাকুর (১৮৩৮-১৯১৪) এবং দুদ্দু শাহ (১৮৪১-১৯১১)-এর গান | The Invention of 'Heterodoxy'? Vaishnava Esoteric Movements in the Songs of Bhaktivinod Thakur (1838-1914) and Duddu Shah (1841-1911)

Abstract

This article is about songs as mirrors of sectarian scissions. They reflect the reasons why in the final decades of the 19th century, Bengal witnessed a rhizomatic appearance of religious movements which were not previously defined individually and demarcated with a separate name. These religious communities - for example those that came to be known as Baul, Sahajiya, Kartābhajā, Matua etc. are formed by low-caste or so-called 'untouchable' people from subaltern milieus. They sprouted and often claim to be originated from a religious substratum known as Bengali Vaishnavism, or Caitanya Vaishnavism. I will outline the exclusionary politics of 19th century Benpali Bengali Vaishnavism in its approach towards the 'apasampradäyas' (deviant sects) - a category which was employed to defineaclearer border between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. While scholarly literature tends to treat heterodox lineages as passive subjects in the orthodoxization of Vaishnavism, I will focus on the agency and the repercussions among the esoteric and heteropractical subjects who responded to accusations and marginalization from the dominant Vaishnava discourse. What was the impact of these newly created criteria to define who is a proper Vaishnava and who is not? How were these criteria accepted or contested by the groups that were excluded from the formation of a modern Vaishnava identity? Most studies seem to treat Baul, Darbes, or Sahajiyā communities in general, as passive recipients of urban elites' condemnations. By contrast, I aim to show that these lineages were not simply excluded from the process of institution-making, but that connections and dialogues (although of an unequal and asymmetrical type) and responses to each other's criticism, shaped the formation of these modern Bengali religious identities, in relational terms. I will portray the complexity of this phase of cultural and religious history by discussing and juxtaposing the songs of two composers, who lived in the same time period and grew up some fifty kilometers apart: Bhaktivinod Thakur, and Duddu Sãh. I propose to compare these two corpora because, although the two composers might not have personally interacted, their songs seem to speak to each other quite directly. In this virtual dialogue, Bhaktivinod Thakur represents the views of an educated elite of Vaishnava reformers, while Duddu Sãh could be considered as the spokesperson for antinomian and marginalized Sahajiyā lineages and their struggle to maintain their traditional authority and ‍status. During the composers lifetime, thhis demarcation line, as it will emerge in the course of the paper, was often blurred and impermanent, leaving open and overlapping spaces for dialogue, loans, adaptations and exchange.