Saumik Sharma is a first-year student from Patan, Nepal, pursuing majors in Philosophy and History. He currently serves as first-year class representative on the Student Senate. Sharma’s academic interests are grounded in the study of South Asia and Indic thought. For his Winter Term, Sharma interviewed Hudkya performers in Nepal and documented oral histories.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What was your Winter Term project, and why did you choose it?
My grandparents on my mother’s side come from particular regions in Nepal called Achham. They left when they were pretty young, and even though both my mother and I consider ourselves Achhami, neither of us have ever been there. I knew about a tradition of storytelling in the western region of Nepal, where Accham is called Hudkya. For Winter Term, I was conducting interviews with the performers, and I’m currently working on a documentary based on Hudkya performances. The performances are a mixture of song, dance, and recitation through which stories of yore — great heroes, battles, losses, victories, family feuds, and things like that — are told. A lot of these stories come from the royal families in the region or from the Puranas, which are part of the Hindu mythological canon. The Hudkya dancers come from an “untouchable caste” and function as transmitters of historical consciousness through generations, which I was interested in highlighting.
What does a Hudkya performance look like?
Performances are almost exclusively communal. Hudkyas traditionally perform at weddings, funerals, big events, any happy occasions or occasions of mourning. There are different kinds of stories and tonalities they use depending on the context. For example, I invited learned Hudkyas in the region over to my grandfather’s village. There were at least about 100 people who gathered because it’s a small village, and news spreads fast. A Hudkya performance is always something that’s experienced with other people. That’s why it’s such a powerful tool. It’s not an art that’s reserved for people who have access to a certain space. It’s for everybody, no matter who pays for it.
They start with a sort of battle cry that is both a prelude and conclusion. It’s a long sound, and they stretch their syllables. In the beginning, they talk about who invited them and what stories are going to be told. There are 12 bharats. Bharats are stories that the Hudkyas I was focusing on tell. They are in an older form of the local language. During the performance, the Hudkya sings the bharat and then stops to explain it in regular language for people to understand what’s being said. He dances around with a drum or sometimes a sword in one hand. There are also some rakhis, or backup singers, who also have their own drums. It oscillates between songs and then the explanation, still a poetic form, but in more regular language and song. I should also mention that the clothes that they wear are clothes that kings used to wear, so they pose as great kings of the past.
How does one become a Hudkya?
Caste is a big thing when it comes to any expression of art in South Asia. Groups within a certain layer of the caste system around the bottom are the ones to whom this job of being storytellers and performers is assigned. The higher castes traditionally weren’t performers themselves because, though being a performer was seen as serving an important social function, it wasn’t seen as dignified.
What was a significant takeaway from your project?
I think this feeling of how much knowledge exists in forms that are not recognized in the “modern world.” For artists, there are hierarchies within the production of respect that they deserve. Especially because this is an oral storytelling documentation project, it was very interesting for me to see how oral traditions survive and are still so robust. In all likeliness, they will vanish. I was very much in awe when speaking to Hudkyas. They have a kind of encyclopedic knowledge of the region’s history and Hindu mythology.
In one instance, a Hudkya I was interviewing asked me what caste I was, and I said my father’s side is Hathiwara. He gave me a list of names of famous Hathiwaras in history who I’d never heard about. People all the way in North India and across the country — stories of their greatness or their failures.
What was a challenge during your project?
The journey from my grandparents’ house to Achham is about a 10-hour drive with very few paved roads. It’s an experience to even make it there. What made me sad was seeing all the beauty of the people and the place and realizing that it’s one of the most neglected regions in the country, in an already poor country. There are very few young people who I met in the village and in the whole region because young people don’t want to stay there. They go out for work.
This ties into the continuation of a tradition like Hudkya, and the many other art forms and traditions that exist in the region, because there’s nobody to pass them onto. That was something I felt deeply about and also felt that I would like to be of help.
I was also confronted by the fact that, for me, it’s a matter of a few days. It’s a matter of a project. I’m going there, recording, and coming back. What is this? Is this only for me? That’s something that kept bugging me and still does. I think this kind of ethical questioning is very important in doing any kind of work like this. You should recognize what position you’re in and what reasons are motivating you to do the work that you do.
Are you going to try to keep pursuing this topic? What’s next for you on this front?
I’m working on a way to put the material that I’ve collected online for open access as a material for the pseudo-conservation of the tradition. I think I am planning to go back to the same region and work on a different tradition of the Dhamis, who are traditional shamans and proprietors of temples. Their tradition seems to predate Hinduism in the region, so that’s something I’m very interested in.
My ultimate hope is that my engagement with this ancestral land of mine will also lead me to be able to make some actual change on the ground. It’s a far-fetched goal, but one that I feel very strongly about. I try to give myself the assurance that I will do something.
How did your background impact your perception of the project?
Something that I kept thinking about when I was in Achham, more than any other place in Nepal that I’ve been to, was my caste and background. In Achham, there’s a different kind of treatment you get as soon as people learn you’re Brahmin. If you are a Brahmin man in Hindu society, unless you have another facet of your identity that makes you eligible for oppression, there’s no arena in which you feel oppressed. My first encounter with feeling lesser than was after coming to the U.S. at 15 for high school.
On top of that, I had come with my grandfather, who is a politician, who has a lot of connections in the region and is also highly respected. I had come from the U.S., which is a big deal. This idea of the American Dream is still so prevalent. It’s the ultimate place to be. So the fact that I was from there meant I received a kind of attention and adoration that I didn’t feel like I deserved.
