Gautam Vishal (KCL) - 2025-26 Students
gautam.vishal@kcl.ac.uk

Documenting Angika Folksongs and Paintings of Bisahari in Bihar: Ecomusicology and Survival in the Anthropocene

Celebrated throughout the Indian monsoon month of ‘Shravan’, the ‘Bisahari Puja’ festival of Bhagalpur in the state of Bihar in India witnesses the performance of Angika folk songs and ‘Manjusha’ paintings, which are unique cultural markers of the region situated on the banks of the now-dead river Champa. The intermedial dialogue between these art forms encompasses the journey of deification of Bisahari, a female, non-anthropomorphic deity fighting to carve a space within the male-dominated Hindu post-Vedic pantheon, through the use of chthonic force, sisterhood, and ultimately establishing a negotiated eleutherocene of sorts. Listening between the lines, I will thus try to identify and problematise the themes of female solidarity between Bisahari and the female protagonist, Behula; how the festival facilitates caste solidarities and the recent Sanskritization and Brahminization of the festival; and the Anthropocentric debate inherent within.

Simultaneously, while the death of the river Champa is pushing these intangible cultural heritage to the brink, the fame of other folk art forms from the region, like Madhubani paintings, over Manjusha, also raises questions about the bias against certain “local traditions”. The debate around representational politics, hence hinges on the multilayered subalterity of the performers and the art form itself and pushes us to further Spivak’s question: If the folk is speaking, who is listening and why?

Principal supervisor: Prof. Katherine Butler Schofield