Folk Literature and Social Space: Interdependences and Correlations

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” this dictum attributed to famous playwright Bertolt Brecht as quoted by Bleeker et al., (2019) sums up the interdependence and correlation between art and literature and society. The world has never been a singular entity. There have always been groups that lived a powerful, privileged existence and it is their experience that has passed down the generations as literature, as the core narrative of human existence at a given time. For long ‘Literature' did not include ‘Folk' or their culture as was relegated to the peripheries of academic discourse as belonging to the savage, subaltern people. However, it is now increasingly being recognised as an archive of vernacular knowledge systems and a great contributor to the social and cultural development of the people. Both social space and folk literature affect and mould each other. What happens in social space gets reflected in folk literature and what folk literature depicts becomes part of social space. Saang as a form of folk performance tradition has been the source of or a defining influence on the various forms of Folk performance traditions of North India. It has been called “a north Indian Folk Opera” by Vatuk, V. P., & Vatuk, S. (1967) because the dialogues between characters are sung. Taking it as a representative form of North Indian folk performative tradition, my paper attempts to analyse issues of representation of culture, society and morality on the Saang stage. The paper, would focus on some selected Saangs of Lakhmi Chand (1905-1945), as compiled by Sharma, P. Chand. (2006) in Lakhmi Chand Granthavali. He is known as the greatest exponent of the Saang form and often referred to as the Shakespeare of North India. His Saangs invariably represent the values and experiences that formed the core of the society of his times. He has taken tales from history, myth and local legends as the basis for his performances. The present paper analyses the content of some Saangs composed and performed by Lakhmi Chand to analyse the knotty question of representation of culture and morality and how one can see reflected in the tales performed by the Saangi, the major social concerns of the times.