Speakers at a discussion in the Dhaka city on Saturday said that removing the fakir identity from Lalon and introducing him to people as baul was part of cultural politics.
They also said that people practised Fakir Lalon Shah’s ideals as a philosopher but colonial studies established him as a folk lyricist. Â
Organised by the production department of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, a discussion titled ‘Jatisattar Prosna Ebong Baul-Fakir Poribeshonar Rajniti’ was held in the National Theatre Hall’s seminar room of the BSA.
Rajshahi University professor and researcher A Al Mamun presented the keynote paper while Bangla Academy director general Mohammad Azam, the Press Institute of Bangladesh DG Faruk Wasif and Dhaka University’s associate professor of the theatre and performance studies department Shahman Moishan spoke on the topic. Â
Director of the BSA’s production department Abdul Halim Chanchal delivered the welcome speech and the event was presided over by the BSA DG Syed Jamil Ahmed.Â
‘The tools of hegemony of the past fascist government were broken during the student-led mass uprising while Lalon always carried an aspiration of a discrimination-free society,’ said Abdul Halim Chanchal.
Lalon was depicted in novels, stories, dramas, and films in both Bangladesh and Kolkata in India while the film titled Lalon Fakir directed by Bangladeshi filmmaker Syed Hasan Imam was made in 1972, A Al Mamun said, adding that Tanvir Mokammel also directed a film titled Lalon in 2004.
Indian film director Goutam Ghose directed film Moner Manush and Amitabh Chakraborty directed film Cosmic Sex depicting sexual perversion instead of pursuit of Lalon’s philosophy, A Al Mamun said, adding that the films hide his fakir identity to make him as a secular personality but Lalon’s philosophy of humanity rejects all distinctions of castes, classes, and creeds. A Al Mamun said that the Fakir-Sannyasi Resistance movement was against British colonialism and landlords of Bengal.
He also said that the Bengali nationalist movement was run by the middle class of Kolkata in the British era and it escaped Bengali Muslims as well as the Fakir movement.
‘Goutam Ghose directed film Moner Manush tried to justify Lalon as a folk lyricist and his songs were established as good as Tagore’s works, but not as the philosophy of marginalised people,’ Mohammad Azam said.
Bengali Muslims were external proletariat in the history of Bengali, said Shahman Moishan.
‘We have to read him as self-reconstructing project instead of national or state identity,’ Shahman Moishan said.           Â
‘Lalon played a vital role as lyricist in developing Bengali language, but his philosophy and language were dismissed in colonial and post-colonial cultural politics,’ said Faruk Wasif. Â
Syed Jamil Ahmed said that nationalism was a colonial concept.
Apart from the religion and language-based nationalism, the civic nationalism is also in practice in modern society, he added.
