Volume 11, Issue – 1, March 2026

Folk Memory as Counter-Archive: Colonial Encounter, Power, and Resistance in Bihu Songs

Abstract: This paper examines Bihu songs of Assam as counter-archives that preserve and reinterpret the colonial encounter through folk memory. Drawing on the postcolonial lens of Edward Said and Homi Bhabha, the study explores how these songs articulate power, resistance and a critique of colonial modernity. The study focuses on selected Bihu songs collected from secondary sources. By employing textual analysis, it looks at how figures like the “Bongal” and the “Sahab,” along with images of steam engines and tea gardens, capture the tangled mix of domination, adaptation, and quiet defiance that shaped people’s lives under colonial rule. While the songs encapsulate the lived experience of labor exploitation and the social changes brought by colonial policies, they often reshape these memories through humour, irony, and a grounded sense of identity. By embedding colonial experiences within agrarian, ecological, and affective idioms, Bihu songs turn artistic expression into a form of historical consciousness. The study argues that these songs function as living folk archives, keeping collective memories alive and challenging the gaps and silences in official colonial histories through folk expression, remembrance, and resistance.

Keywords: Bihu song, Colonialism, Counter-archive, Resistance, folk memory.

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