Article BioScope 6(2) 107–125 © 2015 Screen South Asia Trust SAGE Publications sagepub.in/home.nav DOI: 10.1177/0974927615600620 http://bioscope.sagepub.com 1 PhD Research Scholar, Department of Cultural Studies, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India. Corresponding author: Gaurav Rajkhowa, Flat No. 1-C, Plot No. 65, Sonia Enclave, Geetanagar, Zoo-Narengi Road (near BSF Camp), Guwahati, 781 021, Assam, India. E-mail: gaurav.rajkhowa@gmail.com Coming Back to Life: Jyotiprasad’s Joymoti and Nationalist Politics in Assam, 1890s–1940s Gaurav Rajkhowa 1 Abstract In 1935, Jyotiprasad Agarwala released Joymoti, the first film in Assamese language. In this article, we will attempt to disengage the analysis of Jyotiprasad’s aesthetics from its monumentalization, situat- ing the film within a particular ideological–political conjuncture that forms the horizon of both its conception as well as reception. We will take up two major renditions of the story of Ahom Princess Joymoti—one a drama by Lakshminath Bezbaruah, Joymoti Konwari (1915), and the other, Jyotiprasad’s film—as texts that stage significant conjunctures in the biography of nationalism in Assam. We take up, first, how the theater as an institutional space and the historical drama as a genre become sites of nationalist cultural politics and then, draw upon notions of ordinary language and popular representa- tion to resituate Joymoti’s sacrifice. With Jyotiprasad’s Joymoti, we will see how the cinema facilitates reformulation of these issues as it maps new senses of landscape, materiality, and historicity in the cultural and political field. Keywords Assam, nationalism, Lakshminath Bezbaruah, Jyotiprasad Agarwala, realism, historical drama Introduction: “Why Joymoti?” Devoted wife, fearless patriot, bhakti personiied. Part devi, part Ahom princess, Joymoti exists in the province of nationalist fantasy, in the interstices of rational history. In the course of over a century, Joymoti has come to mean many things to the many historians, poets, dramatists, and ilmmakers who have periodically brought her to life. While it goes without saying that each such retelling would bring with it a range of re-signiications of Joymoti’s sacriice, the purpose of this article is to ask whether this perpetual return to Joymoti is itself symptomatic of anxieties that are constitutive of the affective claims of Assamese nationalist discourse. Is perhaps the need to periodically resurrect Joymoti—be it at annual day school functions or “professional,” ticketed live performances—not so much an indication of the tired despondency of Assamese nationalism, but the very sign under which it is able to perpetuate itself? by Ravi Vasudevan on December 7, 2015 bio.sagepub.com Downloaded from