Manas Kumar Ghosh

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA aims to study the character of four seasonal fairs in Cooch Behar, West Bengal, as sites of intangible cultural heritage by looking into the customs, traditional medicines, and food systems that operate within these fairs. Manas Kumar Ghosh will be the Coordinator of this project.

Manas Kumar Ghosh teaches Film Studies at the Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. In a research he completed titled The Trans-cultural in the Global South: Korean Wave (K-Wave or Hallyu) in Northeastern India, he looked at how global Korean culture affected the local culture in the northeast region through an anthropological survey. Currently, Manas is completing a documentation project titled An Audio-Visual Documentation of Women Activists’ Experience in the Organized Left Politics in Kolkata, which is part of the Avabai Women’s Archive (AWA) Fellowship awarded by the Research Centre for Women’s Studies (RCWS), SNDT University, Mumbai. Apart from this, he regularly contributes articles to Bengali and English periodicals on film, media, literature, and culture. Given his experience, Manas is best suited to be the Project Coordinator for this Foundation Project of IFA. He will be joined by Rajarshi Mitra, Mrinalini Ghosh, and Praloy Nag as collaborators.

This research project, titled Fairground Experience in Cooch Behar, aims to delve into the significance of the sensual and physical experiences that fairgrounds offer and how these spaces become sites of cultural self-assertion. Manas and his collaborators will be focussing on four popular festivals of Cooch Behar that occur in four different seasons in one annual cycle of the Bangla calendar. These are: Hujur Saheb Mela, held on the fifth or sixth day of Phalgun (spring); Ashtami Snan Mela, held in the Shukla Ashtami of Chaitra (summer); Raas Mela, held in the month of Kartik (late autumn), and Ujaniya Mela held in the winters.

This study will be informed by the idea that the expression of the living culture of the region through fairs is a part of the intangible cultural heritage of Cooch Behar that is not encountered in tangible historical sites such as monuments and buildings. The Project Coordinator along with the collaborators will undertake empirical observation, while also engaging with the oral histories of Cooch Behar fairs in order to contextualise the cultural patterns observed during the festivities. The research team will be commissioning local artists to develop alternative cartography of the fairs. Instead of the established patterns of mapping fairs by locating stalls/shops, the maps will highlight the artist’s vision of the fairground experience. Manas and his collaborators will interview the patrons of the fairs, sellers of traditional food, and practitioners of healing crafts and medicines.

The outcome of the project will be four maps by local artists (including documentation of the mapmaking process) labelled in Bangla and English, seven 10-minute-long podcasts in Bangla and English, and a website that will house all the podcasts and documentation. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA, along with the final reports, will be the four maps, seven podcast episodes, and a link to the website.

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Research programme in its attempt to fill the gaps in the existing body of research around fairground experience and how it attempts to gauge the cultural geography of Cooch Behar through its living tradition of fairs and melas.

 IFA will ensure that the project is implemented on time and that the funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is complete and deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with the Trustees.

This project is made possible with support from BNP Paribas India.