Today the 51st Bishnu Prasad Rabha Divas (memorial day) of India’s cultural icon from Assam, Bishnu Prasad Rabha.
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Bishnu Prasad Rabha was one of the most dominant figures and doyens to contribute to the literary, cultural, and political field of Assam. He was born in 1909 in Dhaka to a Bodo family but adopted the title Rabha as he was raised by a Rabha family. He was an artist, singer, lyricist, music composer, actor, litterateur, and political activist.
From an early stage, he played an active role in the struggle for Indian Independence. He came to be influenced by left wing ideas and came closer to the Communist Party of India. However, when Germany attacked Soviet Union during second world war and the Indian communists decided to work with the British government, a section of the party favoured a different approach – to oppose British imperialism and Fascism simultaneously. So a split happened in the communist party and in 1945 he finally joined the Revolutionary Communist Party of India (RCPI). In 1951, after the death of Jyoti Prasad Agarwala, he became the president of the Assam branch of Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA).From an early stage, he played an active role in the struggle for Indian Independence. He came to be influenced by left wing ideas and came closer to the Communist Party of India. However, when Germany attacked Soviet Union during second world war and the Indian communists decided to work with the British government, a section of the party favoured a different approach – to oppose British imperialism and Fascism simultaneously. So a split happened in the communist party and in 1945 he finally joined the Revolutionary Communist Party of India (RCPI). In 1951, after the death of Jyoti Prasad Agarwala, he became the president of the Assam branch of Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA).
He donated an ancestral estate of 2500 bigha land received from the British government in favour of the peasants. His slogan was "Haal Jaar Maati Taar" means "those who cultivate should own the land".
Apart from being a revolutionary he was also a brilliant Academician and Researcher. This was despite the fact that due to participation in freedom struggle he was forced by the colonial British regime to leave Ripon College at Calcutta and he transferred to Victoria College (now Acharya Brojendra Nath Seal College) at Cooch Bihar. He was not able to continue with his formal studies even there, due to frequent raid of British forces in his hostel and was compelled to give up his formal educational career for ever.
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His songs are collectively called as Bishnu Rava Sangeet.His evergreen compositions includes song like Para jonomor khubho logonor, logon ukali gol, roi roi keteki, tilai tilai, kurua botah and many more to mention.
He encouraged all tribes and linguistic groups to keep practicing and developing their own cultural and linguistic practices rather getting succumbed to the Assamese caste Hindu and middle class idea of assimilation. He never envisioned a paternalistic assertion of a particular dominant linguistic or cultural group. Here we can see the fundamental difference between Rabha’s idea of Assam and the Assam imagined as unilingual state by the Asamese middle class nationalist leaders.
The idea of Celebration of ‘Rabha Divas’ on his death anniversary in glittering events across Assam , labeling him as Kolaguru (the master of arts) by focusing only on his selected songs and poems can defiantly be considered as a strategic move to prevent the new generation from knowing his revolutionary zeal and emancipatory creations . The creation of this Assamese middle class ‘cultural icon’ out of a great working class communist revolutionary leader is the ‘irony’ we are talking about.
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