Visual anthropology course in VU soon

4 September 2012

biswabrata goswami
MIDNAPORE, 4 SEPT: The anthropology department of Vidyasagar University is likely to introduce a course on visual anthropology, which is gradually becoming popular in many anthropology departments of the universities in Europe and USA.
A seminar on anthropology was held recently at the department, which is the first-of-its-kind organised by an anthropology department in West Bengal.
Anthropologists from the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata and Anthropological Survey of India discussed health, environmental and identity issues of the Lepchas and Bhutias and spoke on the possibilities of introducing a course on visual anthropology.
A documentary film, Rain in the Mirror, by the national award-winning director Nilanjan Bhattacharya, was screened along with Satyajit Ray’s Sikkim, which was banned by the Centre for more than 30 years. Rain in the Mirror depicted the story of Dorji Bhutia, a Buddhist monk and a reputed mask-maker with supernatural powers of bringing or stopping rain, who chose a self-determined death at the age of 86. He forecast the day of his death and died peacefully on that very day.
 Dorji leaves his mystic image behind but not the mantras to control rain. He did not even pass these on to his son, Duduk.
The family members believed that Sonam, the ten-year-old son of Duduk, would inherit the power by the time he grows up. Sonam himself also aspires for this. Set in this context, Rain in the Mirror follows a ten-year-old’s journey to manhood over nine years, from close quarters.
The camera quietly records Sonam’s growing up, his physical transformations of adolescence and his changing world view.
The filmmaker, like an anthropologist, remained an observer, looking at Sonam encountering various dilemmas in the conflicting milieus of tradition and modernity. While discussing the possibilities of introducing a course on visual anthropology, a professor said a visual anthropology project in order to produce a documented video record of Sikkim’s vanishing indigenous and Buddhist cultures was carried out by the Sikkim government.
The project aimed to record and preserve the meaning and proper performance of Sikkim’s rituals within the context of their social and economic cultures.
The project’s first film, Tingvong: A Lepcha Village in Sikkim (2005), has been screened at several ethnographic film festivals around the world. Among these, it was presented at the Film Festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Oxford in September 2005.
“If this new course is introduced, students and researchers will be benefited much,” said Abhijit Guha, reader, department of anthropology.