In 2005, UNESCO, the cultural arm of the United Nations, proclaimed the Baul artistic genre a “Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.” These attacks on Bauls are also a threat to the survival in Bangladesh of the folk form, which has influenced the likes of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, American folk icon Bob Dylan, acclaimed beat poet Alan Ginsberg, and others. “The Baul performers have been increasingly facing death threats and attacks due to the rise of hardline Islamists since then,” Billah told BenarNews. That is what has been happening since 2011, when a surge in Islamic extremism targeted Bauls as well as writers, bloggers, publishers, activists and intellectuals, said Baki Billah, a human rights activist in Dhaka. That means, when members of the community are killed or tied up in legal challenges for their allegedly anti-Islam performances, their already meagre earnings take a huge hit. While the community is not entirely ascetic, most Bauls live frugally, surviving on what they earn from their itinerant performances. I feel the blessings and touch of Allah through my songs, which also teach me to hate no one.” “But I will continue to sing because this is not only the source of my income, but also a part of my prayers.

“I am in trouble and facing death threats by Mullahs,” the singer told BenarNews. They accused her of defaming Islam “by making vulgar remarks about god” in a performance uploaded online last January. Rita Dewan, an acclaimed Bangladeshi Baul singer, says she was forced into hiding for most of last year after religious zealots in the Muslim-majority nation threatened to kill her.

Singers of the Baul folk tradition in Bangladesh are struggling to survive after more than a decade of physical and legal attacks by Islamic hardliners who consider these artists apostates and heretics.īauls – as these wandering minstrels are called in Bangladesh and West Bengal in India – are neither of those things, but they are nonconformists whose songs boldly showcase their syncretic mystical roots.

Bangla baul song akkas dewan