ABSTRACT

The chapter attempts to examine how a nineteenth-century ‘folk’ Assamese ballad Barphukanar Geet (‘The Ballad of the General’) dealing with Burmese and British imperialisms of early nineteenth century cannot be disentangled from its existence as a ‘written’ text through much of the twentieth century. The emergence of the ballad as an important historical ‘source’ in the twentieth century was closely connected to the very nature of its textual existence. In turn, this influenced the use of the ‘source’ to denote peasant or national consciousness, depending on the location of the historian in debates on imperialism and nationalism. The chapter further argues that the given nature of the ‘source’ raises important methodological questions too vis-à-vis its use to interpret the past. One such methodological aspect that the chapter explores is reading the ballad in terms of history of literature, and what such an approach can highlight about the nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century history and historians of Assam.