Breaking Hegemony, Producing Counter-Narratives: A Kumaoni Folk Ballad and its Literary Adaptation

Abstract

Being a rich source of cultural heritage, Uttarakhand has a plethora of folkloric elements rooted in its soil. However, the continuing migration and globalization have weakened folks’ bond with their culture. “Rajula-Malushahi”, a Kumaoni folk-ballad, is a case in point. Despite its epic form and the rich cultural heritage, the oral performance of this narrative is completely lost. The professional bards have given up their age-old familial profession of performance and have almost disappeared. The apathetic response of the audience has aggravated this process. With the shrinking of the social life of the villages, the enthusiasm of the folks to assemble and listen to this ballad has also collapsed. Nevertheless, the ballad has generated interest in different genres. One finds numerous renderings of the ballad in diverse performance genres such as songs, plays, TV serials (by Doordarshan), radio plays, and literary adaptations like poems, novels, and short stories.

This paper deals with literary adaptation of the ballad in the novel form. Doing so, the paper primarily aims at studying the silenced voices in the oral versions finding their expressions through literary adaptation. This includes not only a human voice, but all those issues as well which are artistically excluded from the surface; thus, presenting only a linear and restricted narrative to the folks. This paper also intends to emphasise the literary potential in articulating an unobserved and muted narrative suppressed till now. The novels create counter-narratives, while maintaining the basic storyline of the ballad intact, making the once prevalent folk-ballad relevant for the present 21^st century readers.

The mentioned objectives of the paper will be achieved through a comparative analysis of the oral versions of the ballad with its literary adaptation. Questionnaires obtained from the authors by the researcher will also be referred to understand the process of negotiation and appropriation authors went through while dealing with the oral versions.