Colonial History, Popular Culture and Disability: The Making of Piyoli Phukan

The proposed chapter addresses the complex intersections of colonial history, popular culture, and disability studies. The chapter focuses on Piyoli Phukan, a 1955 classic Assamese film directed by Phani Sarma, based on the life and struggles of the legendary anti-British leader Piyoli (Piyali) Phukan. Piyoli Phukan is renowned as one of the chief architects of an early anti-British rebellion in Assam in the year 1828. This revolt was suppressed, and Phukan was tried and hanged in the year 1830. As has been remembered in historical and popular memory, Piyoli Phukan had his foot damaged in an encounter with a drugged elephant in his childhood. Piyoli Phukan’s disability is overtly represented and visually reiterated in the film to emphasize his daredevilry, that he could brave the colonial power in Assam despite his physical condition. The focal point of the movie Piyoli Phukan, however, is the heroic struggle and martyrdom of Piyoli Phukan. The current chapter seeks to look closely at Piyoli Phukan to understand how this film portrays a crucial moment in the history of British colonialism in Assam. The chapter will delineate the cultural and socio-political processes informing the making of the film in the year 1955, and will emphasize on the politics and meanings of making of a ‘national’ hero to ignite the sensibility of a frontier people recently integrated with the newly independent nation-state of India. Through a close reading of the visual representation of Piyoli Phukan's disability in this film, the chapter also seeks to understand the societal attitude towards disability in contemporary Assam. Therefore, apart from pertinent historical records, the chapter also treats folklore, literature, and cinema as the archive, and attempts to do textual and thematic analysis. At a rudimentary level, the chapter argues that the film Piyoli Phukan forms an attempt at cinematically recreating a heroic moment in history and underscores the socio-cultural politics of the making of a national hero for Assam. The chapter further argues that the cinematic representation of the disability of Piyoli Phukan- the central figure- contrasting with the physical and armed might of the new colonial regime against which he led an early instance of a native revivalist revolt, also attested to a deep ideological opposition to the colonial notions of physicality, masculinity, and body.