Sujaan Mukherjee

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA will investigate the history and cultural significance of the Raibenshe martial dance form. It will critically assess the impact of the cultural intermediary, Gurusaday Datta, on the research and practice of Raibenshe dance, learn about the evolution of different styles, and examine how the practitioners of this caste-specific art form balance their artistic identity with their social, economic, and political realities. Sujaan Mukherjee will be the Coordinator of this project. 

Sujaan Mukherjee is a writer, researcher, and archivist. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, under the Andrew M Mellon Foundation Project, Decolonization, The Disciplines and the University. He received his PhD from the Department of English at Jadavpur University, where he has also held guest faculty positions. He likes to take an imaginative approach to socio-historical issues and believes in the transformative potential of public humanities. He is interested in archival studies, urban history, physical cultures, and modernism. Given his experience, Sujaan is best suited to be the Project Coordinator for this Foundation Project of IFA. Srija Kundu will join him as a collaborator.

Sujaan observes that Raibenshe dance was ‘rediscovered’ by Gurusaday Datta, a trailblazing revivalist of Bengali folk arts and crafts, in the early 1930s. Datta staged an intervention within the dance form because he considered it a symbol of cultural and social regeneration, which is a crucial aspect of the discourse of regionalism and nationalism. His intervention has not been reviewed in the realm of Raibenshe practice or research thereafter. The central aim of this study is to highlight the politics of intervention that accompany ethnographic research and to engage with the viewpoint of the practitioner as one reexamines the history of Raibenshe dance.

Having engaged with Raibenshe practitioners on multiple occasions, Sujaan will undertake the research through discussions with Raibenshe troupes and artists from the present day. With the complete consent of the practitioners, audio-visual documentation and interviews will be conducted in their villages. The preparation of the questionnaire will adhere to the ethnographic research approach. Sujaan hopes to find descriptive material related to the caste structure by studying medieval Bangla literature. In the process of archiving, the metadata will be created keeping in mind the history of embodied traditions, ethno-choreology, and performance studies. This could allow for easy translation of the metadata by researchers and artists who might wish to use the principles of Raibenshe in their own work.

The outcomes of this project will be an illustrated manuscript, audio and video recordings of interviews and performances, a multimedia archive, and two public events at the School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University, and Arthshila, Santiniketan. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA, along with the final reports, will be the manuscript, audio and video recordings of interviews and performances, and the multimedia archive.

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Research programme in how it foregrounds the socio-economic reality of Raibenshe practitioners and investigates the category of ‘folk’ art through a critique of the politics of mediation inherent in such cultural practices.

IFA will ensure that the project is implemented on time and that the funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is complete and deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with the Trustees.

This project is made possible with support from BNP Paribas India.