Mystic utterances in Tukkhā songs of the Rājbaṃśīs: poetics, performance, and liberation through the mind-body amalgam

My doctoral dissertation aims to study the Tukkhā songs of North Bengal composed by the Rājbaṃśī community in the Rājbaṃśī lect, a living tradition largely unexplored by the academic community in Bengal and beyond. My paper analyses language and practice, combining literary criticism with anthropological research.
These songs were influenced by the esoteric devotional traditions such as the Buddhist Sahajayāna, Śaiva, Śākta and Vaiṣṇava traditions of north-eastern India. I have conducted extensive fieldwork in North Bengal (2017-2020) and documented and archived a number of songs (close to one hundred), interviews and audio-visual performances. My work focuses on the oral tradition (songs) and performative art and on the direct connections between the Rājbaṃśī living traditions, rituals and cosmology depicted in Tantric medieval literature.
My work explores mysticism and language, politics of an alternative imaginative space, which I examine as an expression of esoteric devotionalism in the context of the socio-historical and religious evolution of the Rājbaṃśī community. I assess the artistic and political implications of this literature through a close assessment of how it is performed in the present day. I have translated a corpus of these songs into English for the first time and majority of these songs have not been published before. These songs have created a powerful medium of their self-assertion of the historical consciousness of the Rājbaṃśī community, which has been subjected to political and cultural marginalization. This community has produced diverse genres of songs including Tukkhā, Bhāwaiyā, Tistābuṛir gān (songs for Tista river), songs for Satya- Pīr and Maynāmatī (related to the Nāth cult in Bengal), which are important documents of the cultural traditions of this community, thematically and historically in terms of content, literary value and performance traditions.
My thesis also explores notions of identity, marginality, subjectivity, and constructs a critical history ‘from below’ through the medium of literature of the Rājbaṃśī community. While studying the various metaphors used in the Tukkhā songs, the thesis will try to understand the various strands of heterodox religious ideas that were deeply imbricated in older Tantric traditions and how they were responded to, negotiated with, assimilated, and hybridized. The contours of Tukkhā, as a field and as a living tradition have been refigured and reinvented, while it has engaged with various socio-historical changes in historical, religious and political landscape of North Bengal. The metaphors contained in the songs reveal socio-religious and historical clues about the possible influences on these songs in the absence of substantial secondary sources of literature on the Tukkhā songs. My strategy was to connect the various strands of socio-religious traditions and their influences on the Rājbaṃśī community in constructing a preliminary history of the Tukkhā tradition.

Keywords: Tukkhā
mysticism
South Asia
literature
South Asian religions
songs
poetry
Bengal
Dehatattva
history
metaphor
mystic and poetic speech
India
Rajbangshi
Tantra
oral literature
indigenous
anthropology of religion
Advisor: Acharya, D