The Future Is Not Ours To See: Puppetry and Modernity in Rajasthan

Bhats are low-status bards from the Indian state of Rajasthan. This paper explores a Bhat puppet drama sponsored by a state-run bank meant to teach Indians an ethic of saving and planning for the future. Specifically, it examines the manner in which Bhats sabotage their work for the bank, mocking the values they are hired to promote and thus ‘resisting’ modernist ideologies that purportedly allow for the rational management of time. Still, Bhat dramas are not only conventional political weapons that turn the world upside-down, but also poetic devices that potentially raise the consciousness of audience members so that they themselves might resist. In fact, this play, in the manner it speaks truth to power and thus teaches others to resist in thought or action, resembles the Bhats' traditional praise-work for their formerly Untouchable patrons. I therefore suggest that the Bhats' ‘subaltern consciousness,’ like their insights into the discursive construction of modern authority, is tightly intertwined with local performance traditions.