Sumanta Banerjee’s Logic in a Popular Form is a collection of essays written by the author at different points of time, and first published as this collection in 2002. Its interesting title comes from Karl Marx’s description of religion as a general theory of the world and its logic in a popular form. The volume contains seven essays on different cults in the popular religion in Bengal. Two of these essays engage with the treatment of the major Hindu gods and goddesses in folklore and popular religion from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Four essays deal with cults that have been located among the common folk and have attracted followers from different religions, particularly crossing the dividing line between Islam and Hinduism. The last essay analyzes the divinization of India as Bharat Mata.
The essays are thematically very different from one another and the author employs varying methodologies to harness varied kinds of resources. The subjects have roots in oral folklore and full growth in popular culture. In the process, however, folklore changes in many ways. It may become cheap little books, popular drama, jokes, or anything else. The change may not always allow a view of its rootedness in folklore. Banerjee, as a historian of culture, establishes these connections with reference to different themes. Riding across the discourse of three disciplines—history, folklore, and popular culture— Banerjee’s essential concern is with the historical processes of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries and how they influence changes in texts and performance practices, and with the emergence of new texts and performance practices. To the texts and performance, he juxtaposes the real living conditions of the ordinary rural folk and the early urban working class. In certain cases, as in the article on Radha Krishna, he shows the sociological connection between the two categories of performers and consumers. Banerjee’s analysis does not fall into the trap of labeling the changes as “adulteration” of an ethnic practice, and is free of value judgments. On the contrary, he researches how the urban middle class and the press look down upon practices of popular religion and the changes in folklore that are evident therein. Theoretically, the perspective of the author is located in Marxism, and consequently he is able to see and show that texts of folklore and popular culture have their origin in the lives of the downtrodden, whether rural or urban. The analysis is based on reading of sources vastly different from one another and is convincing. I particularly liked the essays “Radha and Krishna in a Colonial Metropolis” (84-118) and “Bamakshyapa of Tarapeeth: The Dramatist of Popular Angst” (147-194), but found the last essay on “Bharat Mata” (195-218) somewhat clichéd.
Logic in a Popular Form is a lucid and accessible book. The author keeps to the genre of essay writing, and therefore, although he references several theoretical perspectives in history and popular culture, debating with the positions of other scholars does not seem to be the main aim of writing these essays. The main aim is to communicate how ordinary folk express their responses to historical situations through the texts and practices of folklore. So, the essays are not full of citations, and they let the reader go along with the author’s narrative without many diversions. The essays will be useful to anybody interested in the subject of popular religion and South Asia, and to scholars and students of history, folklore, popular culture, religious studies, and anthropology. One suggestion, however, for the readers: the essays are independent and should be read separately from one another, instead of in sequence.
--------
[Review length: 597 words • Review posted on March 2, 2011]