Vol 1 No 1, 2025 Research Article
Payel Ghosh
Research Scholar, Department of English, Cooch Behar Panchanan Barma University, West Bengal, India.
DOI: To be assigned
[Article History: Received: 02 Apr 2025. Accepted: 16 July 2025. Published: 23 July 2025]
Abstract
Bhawaiya is one of the most popular folk song genres of North Bengal. If folk songs are the perfect medium for portraying the lives of marginal people, Bhawaiya becomes the gateway for exploring the female passion and emotion of everyday life. Bhawaiya is the folk song of the Rajbanshis, who have intermingled their language in Bhawaiya. Bhawaiya is attached to every sphere of their lives. Some of the eminent Bhawaiya artists of North Bengal are Surendranath Roy Basuniya, Shailen Roy, Jeeten Maitra, Harishchandra Pal, and Tulsi Lahiri. Today, Bhawaiya has crossed the regional border and reached the international arena. Most of the love songs of Bhawaiya talk about illicit love affairs, which deviate from the oppressive social norms and institutions of marriage. They become the means to express the collective female voices of subjectivity and desire. It is the song of the heart and soul of the people of North Bengal. The present study aims to explore emotions that are often deemed deviant, but these voices can challenge patriarchal norms and reconstruct female subversive subjectivity.
Keywords: Bhawaiya, Rajbanshi, North Bengal, Female Subjectivity, Female Sexuality, Subversive Desire, Authorship.
