Maharai Gaune Storytelling as Cultural Politics of Telling History among the Musahars of Tarai
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Abstract
Storytelling is an ancient cultural performance of the Musahar community connecting their present and past in central Madhes. This narratological episteme of tale-telling and performance is an elementary practice of the community for their historical reproduction and understanding of transformation throughout generations. The professional storytelling program locally called Maharai Gaune was regularly organized by the Musahar community to educate the Musahars about their ancestry, culture, belongingness, and political-economic history across the Nepal-India border. Both the Musahars and Non-Musahars participants curiously attended the storytelling program. The storytellers employed art, music, and performance on mythical stories to persuade the participants who followed spatial and temporal landscapes of the story and socio-cultural contexts. The Maharai revolves around how the legendary ancestors Dianabhadri, as the freedom fighter, defeated the landlord who enslaved and exploited the Musahars. The article explores how an illiterate community employs cultural performance and politics to express deep historical belonging in the territory, a sense of freedom, and political economic dimensions of marginalization.
The article is based on ethnographic observation of the Maharai Gaune events as cultural performance in the field as well as interviews with the Musahars participants and storytellers during my Ph.D. research and subsequent visits at Golbaza Municipality of Siraha district in 2015 and 2022. The non-political programs of telling ancestor’s stories to the youth is a micro political action of reproduction of territory (the legitimacy of territorial belonging through stories of ancestors and cosmology), culture and social relations with other caste ethnic groups. The cultural politics and performance of storytelling are considered as solidarity, collectivity and the therapeutic function of psychological unity to negotiate with powerful groups around them. They applied it to revitalize Dinabhadri as a heroic figure since they could not utilize other evidence of historical belongingness.
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