GUWAHATI, OCTOBER 30: Writer, translator and researcher Shalim M Hussain has been selected for the ‘India Foundation for the Arts’ grant 2017-18. The grant has been sanctioned for four short films on ‘Nau Khela’, ‘Lathibari’, and ‘Kobi Bayat’, three performative arts from the char-chaporis of Assam and ‘Gasshi Rati’, a semi-religious ritualistic performance. The announcement was made by the Foundation in New Delhi on Friday.
Hussain, who hails from Sontoli Village of Kamrup Rural District of Assam, has been working on the literature and culture of the char-chaporis (river islands of Assam) for a long time. In 2010 he co-directed a short documentary film on ‘Lathibari’ and has been instrumental in founding a protest movement that has been given the name ‘Miyah Poetry’. He is one of the founders of Itamugur, an art collective that is focussed on promoting the literature and art from the char-chaporis of Assam.
Some of the poems from the ‘Miyah Poetry’ series translated by Hussain are now being serialised on the Sunflower Collective blog. Hussain is a PhD scholar at the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, and is currently working on Assamese literary aesthetics. He has also translated the popular Assamese novel ‘Asimot Jar Heral Sima’ by Kanchan Barua to English.
His project ‘Jikir’, termed as “a case of memory and forgetting of Assam’s syncretic culture”, is an initiative that emanates from his efforts to study for the syncretic traditions inherent in traditional Asomiya society for more than 800 years and to put out these narratives in the public domain in such fractious times which have been marked by the emergence of militant cultural assertions. The project aims to map out a cultural and social history of the performance tradition of Jikir in Assam within a period of about 12 months. The project is jointly participated by Shakya Samik Kar Khound and Shaheen S Ahmed, two young academic researchers from Assam, now based in New Delhi.
Shaheen is a PhD researcher at the School of Arts and Aesthetics in Jawaharlal Nehru University, in the field of visual arts and her main focus has been on the image (cinematic and popular) and also gender.
Shakya is a Post-Graduate student in Environment & Development from the School of Human Ecology, Ambedkar University Delhi. As someone who ancestrally hails from Dergaon, an important religious centre from the heydays of Ahom rule, as well as being an important settlement of the Khilonjia Muslims, he has been interested in the syncretic heritage of Assam, especially on the interaction between Assamese speaking Hindus and Muslims.
Since very little work has been done on the char-chaporis and lesser still on the cultural practices from these areas, it is hoped that this study and the proposed set of documentary films will help in introducing the chars to a wide audience, and dispel doubts and stereotypes surrounding the area. It is also expected that this will lead to better and more informed debates on the char chaporis in the future.