Folklore has long been explored as a worldview, albeit not in a philosophical way, as though philosophy would only apply to the academic discourse offered by scholars quoting Greek philosophers, European and American scholars who led the historical development of thought up to modernity and, therefore leaving folklore to the domain of popular logic, religion, belief and tradition and their analysis fixed to its analytical genres. That view is rather problematic, utopian and aristocratic. Folklore with its humblest approach and in its particularist view compared to the universalist one of philosophical traditions that selectively utilizes a philosophical framework that makes and popularizes Bangladeshi baul tradition a secular tradition as some components of that tradition aligns with the secular-modern-rational tradition.
The question that comes in my mind following this is that is baul tradition the only aspect where Western philosophical traditions identify modernity? A legend I heard from my mother in 2012 and transliterated into English using more colloquial terms will offer a different perspective.
Alright, listen up folks, let me tell you a tale from back in the day, about a century ago, when Bengal was a whole different scene. Back then, getting word around wasn't as simple as shooting a text. Nah, it was all about boats, sailing the waters and water indeed held an important part in those days.
Now, picture this: you're itching to make that pilgrimage to Mecca, right? Well, you'd best be ready to set sail or even strap on your walking shoes. Some folks back then actually preferred hoofing it over the high seas.
So, here's the scoop on this lesser-known legend. There was this rich man living out in Sylhet, rolling in cash, and itching to go out on a Hajj journey. No second thoughts, he was all in, even if it meant trekking through the wilderness with a kafila.
After a week of trudging along, they were all dead on their feet, stomachs rumbling like an earthquake. So, they scoped out a village to crash and grab a bite. Our rich man picks the closest shack, a real shabby joint, but pilgrims can't be choosers. He knocks, gets let in by some thin man.
Inside, it's a disaster zone. No offer of grub, no nothing. So, our rich man hits the hay, famished and spent. He nods off, only to wake up to the clatter of plates and cutlery. He stumbles into the kitchen, finds the family there, chowing down.
Here's the kicker: they hadn't eaten for days, and last night, a cow kicks the bucket in the village. Owner dumps it in the woods, and these guys, out of sheer dignity, sneak out in the dead of night to scavenge some meat. Now, that's not halal, you feel me?
The rich man can't take it. Learns about their dire straits, and it hits him hard. So, what does he do? He pulls a move straight out of a hero's handbook. Dumps all his cash and bling on them, then hits the road, forsaking his Hajj dreams.
When his kafila rolls back from Mecca, they're like, "Hold up, how'd you beat us back?" The man’s like, "Never went beyond that fam." But they swear blind they saw him, shot the breeze with him during the pilgrimage. Push comes to shove, he spills the beans. Gave it all away to that struggling fam and came back home.
And you know what they say? Allah was so impressed by this selfless act, he stamped the rich man's Hajj card without him even setting foot in Mecca. Now, ain't that something?
What does this narrative tell? Folklore would explain this under oral narrative forms and give it a name of legend under the rubric of analytical categories. This , however, leaves the narrative’s philosophical quality. The narrative not only works as a moral guideline, but also as an exemplary model of what a person should be and how even a rich person should act. But an analysis of this using the folklore lens would limit it to belief narrative and would limit this to its particular genre framework. On the contrary, philosophical tradition would turn this into a universal model and try to apply the knowledge universally as we see with modernity, rationalism, secularism, and Enlightenment.
Regrettably folklore despite its particularist approach still follows the philosophical model that designs the worldview for academic framework and it can be due to the observation that folklore may have its particular application, folklorists belong to the tradition or institutional training modeled after philosophical traditions. For this very reason, most people and scholars in Bangladesh view folklore as a field that deals with tradition, heritage, rurality, folksongs, and riddles and somehow shares a nostalgia for a bygone era and exhibits them as such. This tendency is rather than critical and analytical, full of regret that folklore of Bangladesh is devolving and especially with the rise of online platforms, they tend to have fallen at inappropriate hands, which might lead to the decay of the traditional and artistic forms shared by a large number of rural and urban population. This dwelling in the past and thus having remorse about the present tends to set the tone that folklore deals with the old specimens of the world and is thereby likened to the archeology of the lost traditions, heritages, and beliefs. Does folklore only deal with the lost and endangered traditions, and hence, do many tend to feel nostalgic about their tradition?
From that purview, I want to stress the philosophic aspect of folklore that sets the worldview of the Bangladeshi populace. I would stick to the root level to whom folks are often identified, although I strongly believe that the country is an extension of society due to an upheaval in communication and transportation just as is the case with globalization, to establish my argument. Ideally, bauls are represented as an indomitable part of the ideological standard of a secular rational workd, and their opposition is usually the religious dogmas of the folk who form the majority.
Is this the case? As we have seen in the anecdotal narrative above, the morale and the empathetic do not reside alone in the baul tradition. Rather the tradition is a part of a culture that lays ground for such philosophical purviews. One example would make it clear. A human is expected to live in two stages based on their capability to move according to rural belief in Sylhet, Bangladesh. They call the first stage ‘Dulav Janam’, and the second ‘Kukur Janam.’ Dulav stands for durlava, a Bengali word that means precious, something not easy to find. This refers to the stage in which a child does not have anger, desire, or even the least sign of restlessness. It spans between the time a child is born and lasts up until the baby learns to crawl, and that’s when the baby develops all the signs of anger, desire, and demand, and the baby takes dominance over their action, denoting the start of the kukur janam the beginning of the dog life.
This division of human life depends on the activity and the prospect of the endless rush after something, which is, in its essence, a denunciation of life, of what humans, as they grow, begin to do. However, this does not come from the mystic section of the populace but rather from the everyday populace. This, therefore, hints at the prospect that the so-called mundane, the ordinary life of people, too, leads to a philosophical worldview. How we can explore this itself is the selective responsibility of philosophical schools who now, after constructing their viewpoints, have long been focusing on deconstructing them. The anecdote above that I recorded in 2012 would help us decide that folkloristics may have a philosophical component in it besides its form, genre, tradition, heritage, and belief-oriented worldviews that would serve as a point that would solve the existential puzzle the field has been trying to solve following the birth of nationalism, homogeneity and perhaps now with the extensive celebration of pluralism.
As conclusive as this argument may seem to be, there is no denying that the era we live in now consists of several characteristics that define time. These characteristics are derived from a worldview derived from mediation with philosophical text, secular methods of analysis and observation, and media mediation. For all those reasons, I have long been critical of folkloristics. I dwelled pretty much on the idea that folklore delves into the study of what state and persistent academic worldview allow it to look into. It is a field that centers on the philosophical premise of how scientific, cultural, political, and conservational parlance view people, culture, and everyday life. Now, however, my view aligns with the criticism of the dominant philosophical view of the world that I view as ideological and, hence, utopic. This idea of utopia came in line with the surge of populist politics aligned with the binary opposition of liberal worldviews that aim to achieve the ideological goals of equality, empowerment, freedom, and beyond and is far from getting closer to attainment.
Liberal and conservative binary opposition, albeit old, plays a significant role in contemporary politics and greatly influences everyday life. However, folkloristics seems to take politics with little significance at all. Their focus is limited to tradition, folk religion, rituals, and foodways and somewhat restricted to the idea of urban and rural narrative forms in alignment with diversity and inclusivity. Examples of urban folklore may involve conspiracy theories, rumors, urban legends, and such, while other areas that folkloristics focus on are heritage in their tangible and non-tangible forms. These are important components of how people perceive and express themselves and how it shapes their views and away from the secular-rational education, the so called irrational exists among people and the conservative politics utilizes it to their ends in opposition with the liberal ones although they complement each other.
Within this focus lies the existential crisis of the field. A shift in the philosophical parlance changes the entire course of the field of folklore. Rather than sticking to and developing its foundations, folklore aligns itself with the new paradigm that determines worldviews. It does not mean folklore has to stick to a fixed form, it must change. But as a discipline if it changes itself, it means that the field goes into the brink of extinction and hence the importance of philosophical inquiry.
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